


Contagion

by charbroiled, pentagonbuddy



Series: Sanguine Throne [6]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aromantic Linhardt von Hevring, Blood Drinking, Blood and Injury, Crimson Flower, Eating Disorders, Edelich AU, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Past Linhardt von Hevring/Hubert von Vestra, Post-War, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Trans Linhardt von Hevring, Unhealthy Relationships, but there IS a lot of blood, not as extreme as the tags make it sound
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:34:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 49,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24367366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charbroiled/pseuds/charbroiled, https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentagonbuddy/pseuds/pentagonbuddy
Summary: After surviving both the Unification of Fódlan and subsequent Feasting War, Linhardt hoped for peace in the dawn of this new era. But there's none to be found for him as director of the Hevring Institute. Tasked with the study of Her Majesty's corrupted blood, which unites the Empire in its hunger for her, Linhardt's disgust wars with his cravings.He never thought he'd satisfy his desires with one of the Institute's clandestine patients, Metodey, a wanted criminal and diehard Imperial loyalist. When his own fasting drives Linhardt to seek a cure for the changes wrought by the Emperor's blood, his research threatens both loyalties and affections.The penalty for treason is death, but which will Linhardt betray—his country, or his conscience?---☛ next update will be... Let's find out together, shall we?Specific warnings are in the notes for each chapter when applicable, and the overall tags are things that come up often enough or things I felt merited a heads up before you dive in, even if they're uncommon.
Relationships: Linhardt von Hevring/Metodey, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Sanguine Throne [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1535759
Comments: 70
Kudos: 16
Collections: Sanguine Throne (Edelich) AU Multiverse





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some chapters have art to accompany them, which you can view [here](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1l-bXcQKNhkTVbr2aT9eTaHyc0ZGcbbtV?usp=sharing). [Chapter one's art](https://drive.google.com/file/d/18ccCZlHB0hXG_4WdJ41nqa9ga_kz8uBw/view?usp=sharing) is _very_ erotic.

The second heartbeat dragged Linhardt from the depths of his slumber, his pointed ears now tuned to the rhythms of blood around him. The office door was locked, he was pretty sure. Not that it mattered, for the intruder was silent save for his pulse, and even that was quiet enough to ghost through a graveyard without turning heads.

“I know you’re there, Hubert.” Linhardt murmured from a nest of blankets on his chaise lounge.

The culprit’s pulse spiked, then slowed. Ha, so he’d guessed right…The Empire’s finest spymaster skillfully navigated stacks of books and loose paper, but couldn’t hide that his heart still functioned.

“Well met, Director Hevring,” Hubert whispered. Fabric rustled across from Linhardt, where a couch was, though he didn’t bother to open his eyes and see what Hubert was up to.

Instead, Linhardt shooed him away with a wave of his hand. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

Hubert’s warm breath tickled Linhardt’s cheek. “Can’t I be worried about an old friend’s health?”

His voice was empty in a way that once invited Linhardt to fill it with a kiss, but now did little more than chill him despite his abundance of blankets. What did he know? Was Hubert about to chuckle into his ear— _did you really think I wouldn’t find out?_

“No.” The dark feathers embroidered into Hubert’s vest came into focus when Linhardt opened his eyes. The vest was in crisp, immaculate condition much like the rest of his clothing—Linhardt felt like one of his own patients in comparison with his loose robes and some odor that subtly quirked Hubert’s nostril. “You wouldn’t come all this way for something so trite.”

So then why _would_ he come?

Surely the Minister of the Imperial Household had better things to do. Schedules to micromanage, groceries to buy, dissenters to silence…Not many reasons to visit an _old friend_. But if he wasn’t there as a friend then he was there for business, and Linhardt’s blood drew itself inward at the thought, away from the piercing scrutiny of Hubert’s green eyes. The feeling numbed his hands; he rubbed circulation back into them and hoped it didn’t come across as a nervous gesture.

Clerical errors in the director’s reports weren’t things that would drag Hubert away from his beloved Emperor. If this was about the Institute’s newest arrival, then it’d be much more efficient to interrogate Linhardt right away, or head to the isolation ward and settle the matter himself. Brief as it was, this exercise in thought aggravated the dull throb in Linhardt’s skull; the headache had been what drove him to nap in the first place. Well, that and he was sick of being awake.

How useful was he to the Empire like this, anyway? Now _that_ was a question that would interest his fellow countryman…

Hubert had been staring this whole time, close enough for Linhardt to note they both had dark circles under their eyes.

“If you just wanted to know about my health, you could have sent a messenger.” He looked at the mahogany table behind Hubert, with its patterns that were much easier to pick apart. “That would have been easier for us both.”

“I’ve brought you a gift.”

“Leave it on my desk.” Linhardt rubbed sleep-sand from his eyes. “Oh, and lock the door on your way out.”

Hubert remained kneeling at his side. Linhardt noted what Hubert’s hands were up to; one rested on the lounge chair’s arm, flat and even, while the lower one was curled into a fist against his knee. A pale imitation of a smile crept onto his face as he slipped off one glove, turning his bare hand over, exposing rivers of blue veins underneath scar-mottled skin—rivers that Linhardt could drink from, polluted as they were. There was an odd curve to his fingertips though, with nails clipped short enough to look painful. Almost like the claws Linhardt sported these days, though not quite...

When he took Linhardt’s hand there was a palpable difference in their pulses; Hubert’s was steady as a metronome now while his own lopped along in sluggish arrhythmia. It was a curious thing, how his heart still managed to skip a beat when Hubert turned his wrist over, raising it to thin lips.

“No, it’s far too precious to simply leave,” he said, and his coffee-tinged breath sent a warmth along Linhardt’s wrist that settled in his chest.

Linhardt recoiled from the ghost of a kiss. “I’ll take a look once I feel better.” When Hubert let go, his own hand dangled limp from the touch.

Now back on his feet, Hubert unveiled his velvet-covered gift: a small black box that he set down on the table and opened with a reverent touch—inside was a vial of dark liquid that made Linhardt keenly aware of how dry his mouth was. He almost didn’t see the envelope Hubert placed next to it.

“This will help.” Hubert leaned over with one hand behind his back in a mockery of a bow. “I thought it best to deliver myself, seeing as how you were so busy that you forgot to attend last month’s banquet.”

“I commit a crime and this is how you reward me?” Linhardt’s eyes drooped shut again, though not before he tucked the envelope’s twin-headed eagle seal away in his memory. Something from the Emperor, then. He’d read it later. For now he looked away from the poison on the table and folded his hands across his chest. “How very unlike you.”

“Absenteeism, while regrettable, has yet to be declared a crime.”

“ _I_ certainly don’t regret it. You’d do the same if you could.”

Hubert knelt by his side once more. “Ah, but you need her blood far more than I.”

Soft as his tone was, it stung all the same. Despite his nobility, Hubert’s lack of a Crest granted him freedom from Her Majesty’s macabre edict that certain nobles must demonstrate their fealty by drinking her blood. In fact, he was forbidden from indulging in it at all, though his position as an imperial minister did not absolve him of the pomp and circumstance around its consumption. The few banquets Linhardt _had_ been dragged to were hazy memories, ones better off undisturbed in his mind’s dust-laden closets.

Something gentle touched his skin before his thoughts wandered much further. Soft fabric—cotton? Yes, cotton, most likely a handkerchief, which was being dabbed across his forehead. His eyes fluttered open to a peculiar crease in Hubert’s brow.

“Those banquets are vile things, aren’t they? An abattoir posed as a feast. I’ll confess”—chapped lips replaced the handkerchief—“that I, too, would prefer not to attend.”

It was a delicate touch designed to cut into his target’s vulnerability with surgical precision. Linhardt was familiar with this, but even knowing it was only a tool in the minister’s arsenal…

He seemed unaware of the Institute’s new patient for now, but if he were only here for the blood or to drop off a letter (was the blood a bribe, then?), he _could_ have delivered it and left despite his earlier words. They received diluted shipments of Her Majesty’s blood every few days, after all, and he had a network of spies; surely one of them would have been a fine courier.

No, he wanted something else. “Here to satisfy some other craving, then? That would explain the personal visit.”

Hubert reached for his hand again. “Do you really think I’d come _all this way_ for something so _trite_?”

There was an invitation in the sarcasm, the kiss, the bony fingers wrapped around his. “If it was convenient enough, yes. Just how desperate are you, Hubert?”

Though he tried to sift through the possible explanations, the gaps in his mind were much too wide when his mouth was so dry and his hollowed body ached for the vial that Hubert plucked from the table. Linhardt looked not to the vial, but his bare hand—might his touch be filling enough? Even after all these years, he wouldn’t be surprised if the other man still remembered every contour of his body.

At least one theory was confirmed when Hubert leaned down and kissed him. Yes, he still remembered how to coax his mouth open, how to tease out quickened breaths and quiet noises. What else did he remember? He straddled Linhardt with one knee braced against the lounge chair’s back while his other leg remained on the floor.

Best not to get carried away, his neglected logic reminded him when Hubert sat up, not that this stopped Linhardt from chasing after his lips. Hubert uncorked the vial, met his eyes, and took a sip.

Their next kiss was pure venom.

He wished his stomach would treat it as such and purge it, or that Hubert would suck it from his tongue, not force it down his throat—he wasn’t immune to its seductive taste just because he didn’t have a Crest—but no, it wasn’t _Hubert_ who pressed them closer together, who imbibed the warmth as much as the blood.

Linhardt _was_ the one to break their kiss, however, by yanking back a fistful of Hubert’s black hair. His usually bright eyes were clouded over, a lapse in his guard long enough for Linhardt to snatch the vial from his hands and shove him away. Though Hubert caught himself on the edge of the chaise lounge, a well-placed slipper to his chest sent him reeling over it and into a stack of books. One stack tumbled into another in a series of thuds accompanied by the crunch of paper underfoot while Hubert recovered.

He had to finish it before Hubert stole it, drank it all for himself, left Linhardt with this horrible knot in his stomach that every slurp tightened, not because it was unfulfilling but because it wasn’t filling _enough_ , not such a small vial—the first he’d had in so long and it was already gone—

The empty vial slipped from his trembling fingers. “Disgusting,” he spat, even as he wanted to suck his own red-tinged spittle from the floor.

His legs wobbled as he climbed the rest of the way from his blanket nest, unsteady, forcing him to lean against the chair’s arm for support. Hubert watched without so much as a smirk on his face. Instead…furrowed eyebrows, a frown, and an inscrutable lack of malice in his eyes, though Linhardt couldn’t read what lurked in its absence.

Whatever it was, Hubert kept it hidden when he climbed to his feet, slipped his discarded glove back on, and bowed with both hands behind his back. “Good day, Director.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've read some of my other work, you might have noticed this is similar to [Convalescence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21425854)...because it is! But from Linhardt's POV, and adjusted for some Contagion-specific plot.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Brief mention of disordered eating and vomit, though no actual vomit.

Hubert’s letter was left sealed for several days. Maybe not several, it could have been only a few. Or one or two. It was difficult to keep track, for as much as he wanted to bury it among his other papers, a curious guilt compelled him to keep it in his robe’s pockets, and when he dragged himself from his office to one of the Institute’s labs that day, he brought it with him.

Lysithea was here for some routine tests, something he’d sleep through with no remorse if it involved anyone else. She rewarded the effort by pinching him when she caught him nodding off, and slipped delicate instruments from his hands before he dropped them, admonishing him even when she doubled over from a cough and nearly made the same mistake. Blood lingered at the corner of her mouth as she straightened herself.

“It’s not that bad,” she insisted when she noticed his stare, then sipped from a glass on a nearby workbench.

Linhardt watched a dark cloud with red tendrils unfurl in the water like spilled ink. “That sounds suspiciously like something you’d say if it was, in fact, ‘that bad’.”

He turned his pockets inside-out in search of a handkerchief to lend her and set his letter on the workbench, next to the water and a plate of small cakes, only for Lysithea to smear the blood away with her own sleeve.

She reached towards the cakes but picked up his letter instead. “You brought your mail?” When he went to snatch it back she ducked under his arm, pushing past his sleeve like a curtain, and easily outpaced him shuffling along behind her. “Imperial seal, huh? What’s Edelgard want with the Institute?” 

It wasn’t much of a chase. Linhardt’s legs ached much like his head, protesting their neglect and throbbing even after he stopped to lean against the bench. “I don’t know,” he wheezed, reaching down to rub his thigh, “And don’t particularly care.”

“But it looks important.”

“You read it, then. I’m getting back to work—the sooner we’re done here, the sooner we can both get some rest.”

Once he felt less woozy on his feet, he left Lysithea to snoop at the workbench with a cake in one hand and the letter in her other. If it was something confidential, then Hubert should have told him personally instead of wasting his time with bloody power plays or _whatever_ he’d hoped to accomplish the other day.

Linhardt pulled a wooden box stacked like a book from one shelf and turned it on its side, mindful of the contents. It opened like a book, too, but was filled with rows of glass slides rather than paper, though in Linhardt’s opinion the slides told as much of a story. Entire worlds were pressed between thin panes, distorted much as your average written account, albeit by staining chemicals instead of human imagination. Minor Indech, Minor Cichol, Major Cethleann—his finger trembled as he hurried past that last one, stopped entirely when his claw clinked against a slide with a noxious green smear.

Hresvelg. Impossible to label with a simple declaration of Crest.

The Emperor’s blood, trapped between thin pieces of glass and useless to him in this state, he knew, not that his stomach agreed. Regardless of its theoretical nutrition, the chemical that reacted to her presence in blood and was used in the staining process happened to be toxic. Venin green in the market, _aqua nabatea_ in the laboratory, an irritant in his view. Even after he tore his gaze free his hand itched to peel the glass apart so that he could lick it clean; once he found a Gloucester sample he snapped the box shut and shoved it away.

A second box housed Lysithea’s specimens, all stained blue, though some of the older ones were a faded cerulean—likely due to improper preparation or clumsy handling. Unfortunate, though after years of scrutinizing Gloucester-Charon samples he could draw their patterns from memory, provided his memory was cooperative enough. Her recent samples were free of both thanks to his and Hanneman’s work—Linhardt’s last taste of success, he hated to admit—but now they studied how the loss of her Crests impacted her. Even now, he wasn't free of handling her blood...

Lysithea looked up from her reading, frowned at the way the slide jittered in his grip. Linhardt said nothing of it, set it on the desk, tried to refrain from licking his lips or staring at the faint blue outlines of the veins under her skin.

“Well? Was it important?” He asked.

She set her cake down and handed the letter over. “See for yourself.”

Linhardt tried to skim its contents; a difficult task thanks to the smoke curling up from the paper in thin black lines…No, not smoke, but ink. The ink formed letters and the letters formed words and the words formed sentences that floated out of reach. Impossible to grasp like this, but if he could just catch the pesky things and put them back—

Lysithea stepped closer and rested her fingertips over his clenched fist. “Linhardt?”

He opened his hand to an empty palm. “Summarize it for me.”

She studied him with eyes an arterial shade of red, standing close enough for her blood to pound in time with his headache. “When was the last time you ate?”

Such a fast pulse…Irritation? Her own ailments? And her breath smelled metallic from this distance, masked as it was by the rose-scented perfume they both wore. She wasn’t sick in the same way as him, so for her breath to reek she must have coughed up more than the little bit from earlier, though the dark robes she favored now did an excellent job hiding stains in their folds…

Her fingers snapped in front of his vision.

His own fingers folded a sharp, dog-eared crease into the letter’s corner. “Recently,” he said, then muttered, “…didn’t have much of a say in the matter.”

“Oh? How recent is _recently_?” Lysithea popped the rest of her cake into her mouth, then picked another off the plate and offered it to him.

“Recently.” Though he held up one hand and shook his head, she kept pushing it at him. “It’s right there in the word—neither of us have time for semantics.”

This did little to deter her. A bite, then. He could manage a bite.

The cake was unappetizing in the way all food was as lifeless, inert matter. Even blood—and it pained him to know this—was unfulfilling without Her Majesty’s presence, yet he craved it all the same. A grimace pulled his face taut when he bit into a mouthful of sugar; it melted into a waxen texture on his tongue and really, he could only stomach a few bites before he returned it to Lysithea.

She frowned at the half-eaten cake before finishing it herself. “That’s a start,” she mumbled through a mouthful. “You’re still eating real food, aren’t you? I understand the aversion to blood, but you really can’t go without—”

“The letter, Lysithea. What did it say?”

After one more swallow, she dusted off her sleeves and cleared her throat; while the folds of her robes may hide blood, they did little for powdered sugar. “I’m just saying you need to take better care of yourself. What am I supposed to do if you end up like that weirdo? Lock you up, too?”

“Our circumstances are rather different. Metodey could've been…” It was a difficult gap to fill. _Like that before we found him_ didn’t encompass it all. “He’s an unusual case. But nevermind that—”

“He’s a wanted criminal.”

Linhardt pinched the bridge of his nose. “Right _now_ he’s a rare example of blood-induced transformations in Crested individuals.”

“I’m sure the city watch will want to hear all about that when they find him.”

All this bickering and they hadn’t begun her tests for the day, and his curiosity about the damn letter was going to eat at him until he read it. Linhardt took it into his hands again, rubbed his eyes when the ink started to waver, read and re-read the first sentence—a matter of vital importance to the Empire, he gathered that much—but Lysithea distracted him even in her brooding thanks to her persistent heartbeat.

The first sentence was a waste of his time. So were the second and third as far as he could tell. The whole thing was, he concluded after his eyes glazed over again, and so he let the paper drift to the floor.

Lysithea looked to where it slid under the workbench.

“Now you simply must tell me or I’ll never find out.” There was only one chair in this lab, which he slumped into. “And according to Her Majesty, it’s of dire importance.”

“Yeah, right. She wants you to preserve her blood. Long-term storage.”

 _Of course_ it’d be about blood. Linhardt wrinkled his nose. “Gross. She’s better off asking Hanneman.”

“She wasn’t asking.” Lysithea's heartbeat moved behind him, still faster than usual. “But I don’t think you should do it.”

“Why not? Can’t say I’m a fan of the idea, but I see the utility.” And if long-term storage meant they could stop using that awful pipe in the basement...

“Don’t you know anything about what it’s like beyond Enbarr? Outside the Institute?”

Normally this was where he’d remind her that he was but a humble researcher, nothing more. He did his work, he lived his life, he didn’t bother anyone outside of his research and expected not to be bothered in return. That was how things _should_ be.

Instead, he looked to the workbench, where the unsightly eagle seal stared back at him from under it. “The Empire’s way too big for me to keep track of it all.”

A hand slid into his peripheral vision, white-knuckled in its grip on the back of his chair. “The Great Unified Empire of Adrestia? What a joke.”

“I didn’t realize you kept up with politics. Do they teach that at the university?”

“Unlike you, _I_ can see past my own nose.”

Linhardt twisted around in his seat to Lysithea looking down at him. He expected irritation, outright anger, or a disappointed look that’d remind him of his parents, but her expression was carefully neutral. She didn’t look half as smug as she sounded.

A subtle tremble crept into her voice, however. “Imagine if they got the ruler of somewhere else hooked on the stuff. Almyra’s been a problem for the Empire again, not that their king would fall for—”

The laboratory door creaked open. For a brief, paranoia-fueled moment Linhardt expected Hubert’s dark silhouette—as if this slander were enough to summon him from the shadows—but it was only a silver-tipped cane that crossed the threshold, followed by Hanneman, who blinked and adjusted his monocle at the sight of them.

“Ah, if it isn’t dear Lysithea,” he said, beaming at her, then inclined his head in a curt nod. “Linhardt.” The smile pushed his mustache upwards again when he turned his attention back to Lysithea. “I do hope you were planning to stop by my office today. I’ve this new spectroscopic technique that I think you’d be interested in—”

“Not today.” Lysithea let go of the chair and wiped crumbs from her mouth, smearing a frown in their place. “I’ve got places to be.”

...But after all that, they hadn’t so much as taken a blood sample. He could request her outer robe, or perhaps try to work with what she’d left in her water, not that either option appealed to him. Neither did drawing a fresh sample at this point, quite frankly, not when his fangs itched in his gums at the thought of it. He rubbed idle circles around one through his lips; somehow his gaze drifted back to the glass of water.

Of course there wasn’t enough to work with. Only a small blob hovered at the bottom of the glass with red, viscous threads that wavered above it. Distantly he heard Lysithea leave and Hanneman kept talking—to him, most likely—but something about the blood’s smoky motion compelled him to stand up and lift the glass from the bench.

“Linhardt?” Hard to miss his own name, though Hanneman’s voice itself sounded underwater.

No, _Linhardt_ was the one underwater, his thoughts liquid around him as he swirled the glass until the whole thing was contaminated. It was no different than the cake. So why was it that his hand raised the glass to his lips, which parted far more readily for blood than sugar?

It was disgusting, of course. If he were stupid enough to suck on a coin he’d found on the street, he imagined it’d taste similar. By the time his mind caught up with his body he’d drained half the glass; he set it back on the desk and doubled over, his body wracked by coughs while he clutched his stomach. Nausea made his guts squirm and drool seeped into his mouth while his body prepared to expel the horrible thing he’d consumed—it wasn’t fair, how it refused to do this with Edelgard’s blood—and his hands flew to his pockets once more in search of a handkerchief he could cover his mouth with. Had he really been so careless?

A cloth that was an unfortunately rancid shade of yellow dangled into view. “ _Must_ you do that here?”

Linhardt grabbed it, coughing too much to respond. His glare would have to suffice.

“Oh, I don’t mean any harm by that. But, well, it’s an awful sound, and then _I’d_ be sick and I think it’d be unfortunate if the staff had to clean two accidents—”

“I’m fine now,” he said once the feeling had passed. No vomit, thankfully, though the handkerchief was damp with his saliva. 

Hanneman refused it when he tried to hand it back. Fair enough. “I don’t know about that. Is it the craving? It seems you haven’t been getting enough—”

“I had some just the other day.”

With his narrowed eyes and bristling mustache, it was clear Hanneman didn’t believe him. “Ah, but I fear age is taking its toll on me.” He tapped his cane against the floor. “If I perhaps overlooked a few withdrawals from our supply, why, I’m sure Her Majesty could understand an old man’s follies.”

Linhardt finished wiping his mouth with the handkerchief, then pocketed it with a sigh.

“Perhaps you should help yourself to a bit more.” Hanneman said.

“Why are you here?”

Hanneman went to the box Linhardt had searched through earlier and pulled out a Hresvelg sample. “Needed one of these for some research.”

A pang of hunger ached in his stomach despite its protests a moment ago. “...On what?”

“Please don’t trouble yourself over it.”

“Hiding your work from a colleague? Tsk, tsk, Hanneman.”

Hanneman adjusted his monocle, frowning. “I’m not hiding anything. You’ve made your feelings about this whole Hresvelg business _abundantly_ clear I should say, so I doubt you’d want to be involved in—”

Linhardt stared at the green slide. “Preservation? Is that it?”

“...Ah. I see Hubert must have paid you a visit, too.” Hanneman tucked the slide into his pocket, then shut the box containing the rest. ”My apologies for not mentioning this sooner.”

Rationally, Linhardt knew it was considerate in a way for Hanneman to leave him out of this. He was much better suited for the work and it’d keep him out of Linhardt’s business—ideally far away from the isolation ward and Metodey, he didn’t need to know about any of _that_ , though he couldn’t exactly revoke Hanneman’s access without good reason. Irrationally, while Linhardt would be the first to remind others of his fragile constitution and the importance of stressing it as little as possible, it stung that Hanneman didn’t bother to ask, or even do his usual blathering while Linhardt sat there and listened. He wasn’t quite sure _what_ it stung—not his pride, he had none of that, but the way Hanneman looked at him made Linhardt want to puke all over again.

“You’re welcome to help, of course,” he went on after Linhardt said nothing, and opened a different cabinet to fetch something or other. “If you feel up to it.”

“No, no, have fun.” Linhardt said, turning his gaze to the fallen letter one last time. “I’ve got places to be, too. Walls to stare at. You know how it is.”

“I hope that helps.”

The utter sincerity in Hanneman’s voice was gutting enough, but far worse was how it made Linhardt want to rake his claws across his colleague’s face for the grave offense of minor annoyance. It wasn’t like him at all—he hated the urge—and hurried out the door before it grew any stronger.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Minor self-injury in this chapter, not in a suicidal sense, just "WOW i'm excited about blood!!!"

Though the patients of the Hevring Institute may not always be human, they must always be treated as such. One of the few policies Linhardt bothered to enforce, irritating as it was when they hissed and nipped and clawed at him, whether it was with blunt fingernails or dragon-like talons attached to scaled arms.

They couldn’t help it, really, otherwise they wouldn’t end up in the underground isolation ward. Not his favorite place to end up either, and he thanked the Goddess—perhaps Emperor—that there were only a handful of occupants. Nearly all of them were Crestless thrill-seekers who’d stolen one too many sips of Her Majesty’s blood, which she now deemed a crime to protect such people from themselves.

Only for the Crestless, and only if unsanctioned. Those given her blessing could— _must_ —indulge, for Crest or no Crest it bestowed strength, vitality, clarity—

No one liked to be reminded about the hunger.

It gnawed at Linhardt as he exited the main elevator, dragging a bucket of water down the isolation ward’s hall. A vial in a bag at his hip saturated his thoughts; while the bucket was a hassle it was also a convenient distraction that stopped him from tearing off the vial’s cork and sucking down the blood inside. This brief acknowledgement of his stomach’s ceaseless grousing was enough for him to tighten his grip on the bucket’s handle.

It was time to pay their newest arrival a visit. Would’ve been better if Lysithea could come along, but after she’d left the Institute the other day she’d yet to return for her medical examination or anything else. He’d sent a letter of his own to Enbarr University about it, but if he’d gotten a reply then his office clutter must have eaten it. Not that it mattered right now, he supposed—no one else knew about Metodey and thus could take care of him, and while Linhardt was perhaps not the best person for the task he didn’t want to think of himself as a warden who let prisoners rot in their cells. He didn’t want to think of himself as a warden at all, but…

Metodey was at the end of the hall on the lowest floor, the most discreet arrangement they’d come up with; his penitent murmurs could be heard long before Linhardt saw him. By the time he made it over, the thin strips of muscles in his arms burned until he set the bucket down, then doubled over with his hands on his knees while he caught his breath.

If he drank what was in his bag then none of this would be an issue. The temptation had left his throat dry even while he’d filled the vial from the lone pipe that connected them to the imperial palace. The door that locked it away from everyone but himself and Hanneman was rigged to notate when it opened; while Hanneman claimed he’d overlook a few unusual visits, whichever Vestra spiders kept track of their access to Her Majesty wouldn’t share his pity. On top of it all, the pipe itself was a miser, allowing only a sluggish trickle of imperial backwash that would otherwise be drained into the sewers. A system designed to spit in the face of all sanitary guidelines. Not fit for anyone’s consumption quite frankly, intended only for research, but if he refused to partake of Edelgard herself, well...

When he stood back up, he found Metodey staring at him with eyes that gleamed a sickly yellow in the light of a magic lantern. His nostrils flared when he inhaled the stale air and his slit pupils bloomed wide, wider still when Linhardt approached. 

“Linhardt.” It was less of a greeting and more of a statement.

He answered the question in Metodey’s uncertain tone with a nod. “How are you feeling?”

Metodey licked his lips, worried the bottom one between his fangs while he thought. In lieu of a verbal response, he scraped one of his talons against a cell bar, rending the silence between them with a long, metallic screech.

Someone growled—himself, Linhardt was embarrassed to realize—and Metodey retracted his hand.

“Ungrateful wretch,” Metodey said, and another embarrassing sound rumbled in Linhardt until the other man patted his own stomach. “I keep saying you’ll bring more, that you wouldn’t let me starve—you wouldn’t, of course—but _the belly has no ears_.”

The way he laughed after that last fragment made it sound like a poor attempt at a joke, though his lips uncurled from a smirk to a flat line when Linhardt failed to recognize the reference.

A memory of Seteth snuck up on him, of a time when his former professor tapped Linhardt’s shoulder to wake him, then asked a question designed to embarrass him for sleeping during a seminar, only to sigh and shake his head after Linhardt mumbled the wrong answer. While that particular strain of disappointment didn’t bother him then and was even more impotent from Metodey, the memory itself tightened his throat.

He swallowed the thought down; Metodey’s stare followed his jugular. “So you’re hungry, is that it?”

Metodey nodded.

Linhardt could feel the hunger in his gaze, how it crawled over him in search of Her Majesty’s blood. What was his own expression as he studied his patient? _Patient_ sounded wrong, Linhardt thought with a shudder. He wasn’t in their records as such, wasn’t in there at all, but prisoner was such an unpleasant term.

Metodey’s shoulder was jammed against the bars now; he reached out with blood-beast talons. “I know you have it, Linhardt.” He turned his hand palm upwards. “You have some, don’t you?”

 _No_ , Linhardt wanted to say, _I have, in fact, come to gawk and let you starve_. Instead, he cleared the thought away and reached into his bag, rolling the vial between his fingers while Metodey’s pupils contracted and expanded in rapid succession. It’d be downright sadistic to pop the cork off and drink it in front of him. If someone did that to Linhardt right now he wasn’t sure he could stop himself from lunging at them, and so despite fraying edges of his resolve, he passed the vial between his own hands once, twice, a third time before he stepped close enough for Metodey to snatch it.

Metodey’s first instinct was to shove the glass between his teeth, ready to crunch.

“Ah, please don’t.” Linhardt winced. “You’ll waste blood.”

Though he’d glared at the interruption, after a moment of thought Metodey speared the cork on one talon, pulled it out, then gulped down the vial’s contents. There. No matter how badly Linhardt wanted it, it was gone now and there was nothing he could do about it. With blood out of the equation, he could turn his attention elsewhere.

They’d done quite a lot for Metodey’s condition since he’d arrived, hollow-eyed in a tattered uniform stiff with gore, but there was still room for improvement. Linhardt took a small mirror out from his bag, holding it face down against his chest after he caught a glimpse of his own dilated pupils. Once Metodey was done slurping every curve of the vial with his tongue Linhardt offered him the mirror, though he eyed it like it was coated in poison.

“No need for alarm. It’s only you”—he turned the mirror around—”even if it doesn’t look like it.”

Metodey clinked one talon against it, flinching when the man in the glass copied the motion, then waved his hand in a silent request. There was no harm in passing him the mirror, Linhardt thought, until Metodey held it against the bars and dropped it with a choked sob.

“Unacceptable,” he wailed, “she won’t take me back like _this_!”

The cracked glass turned Linhardt’s reflection into a scowling triptych when he picked it up. He tucked the mirror away in his bag only to fetch a razor and some rags turned makeshift towels. “If you sit still I can clean you up, but I fear the changes are irreversible.”

Far too busy exploring his own face, Metodey didn’t respond. Linhardt’s patience was thinner than he cared for; he was still hungry, but there wasn’t much he could do about it here. _Not exactly_ , the gremlin that’d taken residence in his stomach whispered, as _technically_ he stood before an excellent source of blood. He could see flashes of it on Metodey’s cheeks when he tilted his head a certain way in the light.

Bulls hated the color red, didn’t they? He’d read that somewhere. Some fools made a sport of it, taunting the poor things and putting themselves at risk of being gored.

“Clean how?” Metodey finally asked. “I don’t want another bath.”

As if he’d go through the trouble alone. The first time had been awful enough, and that was _with_ Lysithea’s help. “No, not a bath. Just a haircut.”

Metodey’s pupils narrowed back into slits. There was a wooden chair in his cell; it was curious the way he stepped back from Linhardt with slow, cautious steps until the chair was between them. At first it seemed he was making space for Linhardt to step inside, but once the cell door was open he gripped the chair and hopped onto its seat as if it were a perch. The way he curled around it reminded Linhardt not of a falcon or an eagle, despite the talons, but a hunched-back cat ready to hiss. No, cats did that when they wished to look intimidating—Metodey had all his vitals protected in this position.

“It’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Metodey drummed his talons on the chair’s back in an uneven rhythm. “What’s in it for me?”

“‘She’ won’t take you back if you look like this, right?” The drumming stopped. Metodey stared, then squinted while Linhardt held his hands up, palms outward. “You said that a moment ago.”

“Where’s the Emperor? Why are you alone?” Metodey smiled. An awful expression. “Here to rip out my throat and claim Her for yourself? I didn’t take you for the jealous type.”

The suggestion was enough to make Linhardt queasy. “The Emperor is in her palace, and no one else was available to come see you. Why would I kill you after all this trouble to keep you alive?”

He blinked at that last question, clacking his talons together while he thought it over. Linhardt used the time to yawn, then rolled up his sleeves and tied them back. By now it’d been enough trouble that it’d be a waste to leave without following through; at bare minimum Linhardt had noticed the dark scabs that ringed his hands in suspicious crescent arcs.

“You’ve been chewing on your hands again.” The observation slipped out while Linhardt had his hand dunked in the bucket, radiating warmth from a subtle spell.

Metodey’s posture stiffened; he stuffed his hands in the space between his calves and thighs.

“...I’m not mad.” Linhardt wiped his hand on his robes before he inched closer. “But it’s a nasty habit.”

From here he saw scratches on Metodey’s cheeks, too, with scabs gouged between red scales. Based on the color and location one seemed to cause the other, though he’d yet to see another Crested noble with these particular afflictions. If he could stomach the blood it’d involve, perhaps it was worth studying...

Metodey kept his silence, though he held out his hands after Linhardt gestured for them. They must hurt, for he flinched at the white glow that flowed from Linhardt’s fingers to melt away the scabs. Hopefully the wounds were mild enough that they wouldn’t itch from the accelerated healing.

“I know it’ll be hard,” Linhardt said, trailing light across the gouges in Metodey’s cheeks, “but try not to scratch.”

A fresh set of scales, smooth under his thumb, shimmered in the lamplight. Metodey leaned into the touch, his eyes fluttering shut, and once the healing was finished he cracked one eye open again. “I’ll look much more presentable with a haircut, won’t I?”

Linhardt nodded and wrapped a towel around his shoulders—two of them, one on each side since they were so small. “You will.”

Dark flecks of blood and dirt smeared down Metodey’s face during the initial rinse; every ladle and scrub from a towel peeled away more scabs and scales and who knew what, which dripped until they filled the grooves in between each stone on the floor, and Linhardt knew it was his hungry mind playing tricks on him again, but the cracks overflowed with a deep red, an ever-flowing stream from the Emperor, who sat on her sanguine throne with open wrists on obsidian armrests as the Empire’s eternal springhead—

Filthy droplets splattered onto Linhardt when Metodey shook water from his hair. “You said this wasn’t a bath,” he growled from underneath his stuck-together bangs, then sputtered when another ladleful washed over him. Clean, clear water, Linhardt reminded himself.

“Had to start with a rinse.” Linhardt said as he set the ladle aside in favor of a comb.

“A ruse, more like.” Despite the venom in his tone, he remained seated. ”You’ll drown me like, like—sunk like the sun’s light in the ocean’s—” The words ended in a gasp at the first tangle Linhardt combed through.

“A rinse and a bath are entirely different things.”

Since Metodey insisted on hugging the chair’s back and staying in that odd perch of his, it made the process harder than it needed to be, but true to Linhardt’s word he tried to give him a proper haircut, or at least something that resembled one. He’d never cut his own hair and no one thought a noble like him needed to learn; since hair was never an interest of his, he’d been inclined to agree.

Since Metodey insisted on hugging the chair’s back and staying in that odd perch of his, it made the process harder than it needed to be, but true to Linhardt’s word he tried to give him a proper haircut, or at least something that resembled one. He’d never cut his own hair and no one thought a noble like him needed to learn; since hair was never an interest of his he’d agreed, but now as he sheared mats with a razor he only knew how to shave with, it left him flustered in much the same way as his first attempt to cook for himself. At least in the kitchen he could follow a recipe—here he had no way to know if a cut was good until he made it, and there was no sticking the hair back on when he messed it up. Metodey did little to help with all his babbling and wiggling around.

It started off sensible enough—the semantics of bathing—but as Linhardt had come to expect, meandered back to the Emperor and the glorious future that awaited Metodey back at her side. Far more unusual was the moment he spared to sob at the clumps of his “beautiful” hair, plucking it from his shoulders to clench in his fists before he weaved it back into the Emperor’s plan for him. Linhardt was thankful that somehow involved a haircut now.

Despite the grim acceptance, when Linhardt took hold of the odd-colored stripe in Metodey’s hair sharp talons dug into his wrist and the pinpricks of pain stayed his hand. Metodey didn’t let go until he released the strand, eerily silent all the while.

Linhardt rubbed the sting from his wrist before he continued. The discolored bit and uneven bangs, however mangled, weren’t exactly _beautiful_ , but they helped Metodey look more human and, Linhardt hoped, feel like one as well. It seemed to improve his condition on at least one metric already, for he leaned into the comb once the mats and tangles were taken care of, his stream of mutters going from a frantic outpour to a trickled drawl. He’d uncurled from his defensive position into a slump, resting his head on folded arms that made this last bit of combing quite inconvenient.

“It’ll come back looking even better,” Metodey kept going despite Linhardt’s silence, “I’ll come back, and when I do I’ll rip _his_ hair out for doing this to me, it’s really his fault in the first place, not yours, you’re just—”

As Metodey went on, Linhardt couldn’t help but notice how he scratched at the stubble along his jaw every third syllable or so. Not enough to gouge but enough for Linhardt to set the comb aside and ask, “Do you want to shave?”

“Eh?” Metodey lifted his head to blink at him.

Linhardt looked down at the razor back in his own hand. If the blade was sharp enough to cut hair it could slice through skin. He wanted to think there was nothing to worry about, but there were still divots in his wrist and Metodey had struck with serpentine speed. There’d been a reason for it though, however vain, and he had no reason to harm Linhardt now.

But when Linhardt looked at him he saw a circulatory system wrapped in skin, with a pulse that beat louder the more he thought about it. A pulse that sent blood through the major arteries, yes, the sort that when punctured would—oh, he didn’t want to think about _that_ —but there were all sorts of thinner veins, safer ones, and while his fangs itched at the thought they were wholly unsuited for the task (designed to rend and tear, he’d once noted in a mirror).

“I’ll take care of it,” he told Metodey. “So please sit normally for a bit.”

Metodey scoffed. “I know how to _shave_.”

“Have you ever done it with those?” He pointed the folded-up razor at Metodey’s talons.

“...Not yet.” His face was scrunched up, clearly skeptical about this, but he turned around in the chair and sat with his hands in his lap.

Linhardt unfolded the razor, dipped it in the bucket, stepped in front of the chair, and took hold of Metodey, who sucked in a breath when his chin was tilted. “Then let me.”

There was that odd look in his eyes again; Linhardt didn’t know what to make of the way his pupils shrunk and expanded. He hoped it wasn’t a sign of fear. The scholar in him wanted to ask, but he needed to concentrate on the movement of his razor, on tilting it at the precise angles where it’d slice off the stubble while leaving skin intact.

Still, his mind wandered.

Part of what separated them from beasts was their use of tools. The razor, while dangerous, was meant for harmless tasks such as this, like a dagger that had been tamed. _If_ he drew blood it would be a reasonable amount, enough that it’d be no trouble to heal...but that he thought this at all sent a pang of guilt through him. These weren’t his thoughts. He didn’t want them to be.

Metodey remained pliant under Linhardt’s touch, though his shoulders were tense again and his eyes screwed shut at every pass of the blade. Could Metodey read his mind? Another irrational thought. By the time Linhardt was on the last strokes along his neck, Metodey’s breaths were ragged.

A sharp cry—hard to tell whose it was—pierced the air when Metodey jerked his head into the blade and sliced a red ribbon across his own cheek. The razor clanged to the floor; Linhardt leaned against the chair and caught his own blood-streaked reflection in the blade.

There was slurping by his ear and a broken laugh as Metodey held out his talons, too dark for Linhardt to see the blood on them, but the metallic smell and the knot it twisted in his stomach left him light-headed anyway.

This nasty little man and his nasty little—games? Was this some sort of game to him? Linhardt fumbled around his pockets, found the puke-yellow handkerchief Hanneman had given him and oh, _that_ observation didn’t help the nausea but he pressed it to his nose all the same. He’d scented it by now with his usual mix of cloying aromas, strong enough to drown out the blood, not that it helped when he thought of dabbing the handkerchief across Metodey’s face, of how the blood would bloom across the fabric and then he could bring it to his mouth—

Linhardt grabbed the razor with the handkerchief instead, but when he stepped back with it clutched in his trembling hand, Metodey scrambled to his feet. He managed to knock the bucket over in the process, spilling water across the stones.

“It’s _yours_ , for you—”

Linhardt slammed the cell door shut even as Metodey continued to, to beg? Offer? Demand? Metodey refused to _shut up_ as Linhardt fumbled for the key in his robes, jammed it in the lock—

“Don’t you want it?”

That shrill voice followed him all the way to the elevator, faster and louder with echoes that chased him even after the doors closed. Linhardt slumped against the back wall, wincing at a sharp pain in his own hand. A dark red seeped into the handkerchief from where he’d squeezed the razor.

Fresh blood oozed from the cut when he peeled the cloth away. Seeing it hurt worse than the injury. Worst of all, he raised his hand to his lips, sipped from the growing pool in his palm, then turned his head and spat it out.


	4. BENEDICTION I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BENEDICTION is Metodey POV written by [char](https://twitter.com/metodey8)! It's experimental and fragmented and we hope you enjoy. It's also something of a sequel to [consumption](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21437749), also written by char, which covers metodey's dining experiences from Enbarr's sewers. This chapter has a brief summary in [this art](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gCkZAO7MVoXsV9Rk6e6rW44f5vyc5n9O/view?usp=sharing), which explains everything.

I. LEECHES

Shards of glass and memory littered Metodey's thoughts. He was never sure which would sting him until he picked them up and examined them and noted if his skin was pierced or not. Piecing together what had happened was like navigating a heavy fog on a long stretch of beach, the landmarks he relied on erased into suffocating grey. At the moment it was a pleasant wander, and he felt fed—but as to how he'd gotten there, well… if he pieced together enough of the shards, he thought perhaps he'd be able to see, and with that goal in mind the sting didn't bother him at all.

He had been to a beach like the one in his thoughts, during the Feasting War, he was almost certain, and the Emperor, a vindictive smudge of red just beyond him… no, hadn't that happened here? In night, not fog, and shining silver…

...well, either way, he was being punished for his failure to prove himself, and there was no doubt that he deserved it. Being locked behind bars, having the Emperor taste of… of ordinary meat, not the sweet nectar… her red eyes regarding him in solemnity with such—such maddening pity—no, he would persevere no matter how much the ache twisted and cramped inside him. It was all part of the Emperor's trial. He could not fail. He could not. That would prove the vulture behind her right.

Now and then a saint came and sat behind him and touched his face. He knew this man was a saint because his blood was sweet and to touch him was as filling as the Emperor's blessing and he always smelled of roses and camphor. When he was alone he yearned for the saint. Not like the idiots who venerated a goddess who had mocked them and forsaken them to die far below her own station, no, Metodey's saint spoke softly to him and him alone and regarded him so gently and touched his neck and chest and his skin was smooth and soft and his mouth watered and his fangs pricked his tongue even when he thought of him and his roses—

Roses. What an aggressive smell, not sweet, not musky, but a pillowy velvet, for such a delicate flower that shed petals when it was plucked. He had been introduced to the scent for the first time during the war. _That_ garden hadn't survived soldiers' boots tramping through it. Passing through he had laughed at the care given to these useless growths and tipped his vodka onto the plants as a toast to the end of their frivolous existence, and then later they had burned with the courtyard, and the scent… Wasn't he trying to concentrate?

Ah, yes. He'd first been aware of the saint's scent of roses when he was sitting, cold in cold air, so much colder and open and less safe than the sewer, he remembered thinking that he shouldn't have left, shivering and damp from scrubbing with his hands bound behind him. His hair was being tugged at with deft hands in sleeves that smelled like that garden before it had burned, and a haze of questions and frustration and hunger until the bonds were released and he bit down on the glass they gave him and it cut his mouth and crunched like sand between his teeth but at least the blessing filled his mouth and ran down his throat and soothed it.

The hunger had been the worst then, though the Emperor told him to wait, be still and wait, and he tried and struggled but it hurt, it clawed at his insides until he writhed and begged, chewing the glass down for every slick taste of her inside it. A quiet voice—not hers, she watched with a dispassionate stare that hurt him to see, as though he had done something _wrong_ —the other voice sighed that it was such a smell and he tried to remember what the smell was. Not blood, not roses; perhaps his old uniform. They promised they had burned it so that the vulture couldn't find him. 

Instead he wore the linen tunic they had given him. Like a _peasant,_ not one of the Emperor's _chosen_ —but—no, he had to be patient. That was… that was the point, wasn't it? Metodey had knelt before the Emperor and the crimson flames reaching to heaven up her helmet and cloak and swore to lift all of humanity out from the yokes of the church and crush the church and inhuman saints under them as though they _deserved_ to be better simply by some accident of birth, born under the eyes of heaven rather than the pillars of hell. His veins ran with fire and glory. They would all be equal when they were dead!

Then—they were dead, though in bitter regret he had never come closer to cutting into their ancient bodies than when he had stood in the crypt with the dry old filthy relics—and then the Emperor had bade him drink of her instead and he had partaken without hesitation and after that every moment that sweet nectar was what he dreamt of instead of the ecstatic chaos of the battlefield—how had that poem gone? One of his favorites… 

_And when the burning moment breaks, and all things else are out of mind,  
and only joy of battle takes / him by the throat and makes him blind—_

—yes, fervently yes, and a joyous blindness, a narrow purpose shared between him and the slickness of the blade he honed and polished, and how neatly it flensed muscle and skin. They had taken a wounded man prisoner once and he had recognized the soldiers' cuts through the padded armor as ones he had left. Metodey stood over the cot that night to study how the man sweated and died from the poison he carefully wiped across his swords' edge before each ambush. He could have slit his throat and it would have been kinder, but the kindness was not leaving him on the battlefield to rot with his brethren, so who was Metodey to interfere now? 

Besides, he'd only seen the poison work until the end on animals, before. To his delight the effects were about the same on a human, if slower. Due to size? Perhaps? Or some other reason? Those and further questions had chased him to lunch where he sat and contemplated over the mess hall slop, until his comrade sitting next to him asked what he was smiling about. He told them about the poison and they moved their plate away! As though he would poison a comrade merely to see the results—it still made him snicker, though now his throat was so often dry. Ah, but not _now_ … 

He tightened his grip around the clothing of the saint and drank in the smell of roses, to assure himself that he was lying alongside the saint and not in the sewer still, twitching and dying and dreaming of warmth. Dying had always seemed like something other people did, _Linhardt._ That was the saint's name. Linhardt. He treasured the name and tucked it deep into his chest. The first benediction Linhardt had given him, before he could remember the saint's name clearly, had been a handful of black, squirming—

—leeches? They were meat and he was ravenous, so he swallowed them. There was no blood in them, nothing filling, just muscle that squirmed in his throat. He'd hoped so dearly that they had been filled with the Emperor's blessing, but—to let the leeches drink of the Emperor, her arms dotting with the disgusting, squirming—then he had lashed out and shrieked against the bars, livid at the injustice done to Her, and the Emperor and her saint had given him a pitied look and snuffed the light and left him in the dark.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized I should probably include the art I've been making along with this fic, huh? You can see it all [here](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1l-bXcQKNhkTVbr2aT9eTaHyc0ZGcbbtV?usp=sharing), and this chapter is graced by the noble visage of [Ferdinand von Aegir](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r3eWX6-cOGCp_AgoVsmj675-znCIJXnP/view?usp=sharing)!

After all his time in the Institute’s lantern-lit halls, the sun was far more irritating than Linhardt remembered. Years later, he understood Constance’s peculiar distaste for it. 

His summons to the palace had been abrupt, the trip itself a painful smear of light and sound that strained his muscles and left him sore from all the stairs along the way to one of the imperial gardens. The palace had been renovated in a variety of ways since the war, weaving Agarthan technology they still knew so little about into its design, but whatever bright mind was responsible had yet to install an elevator.

Linhardt complained about it to the courier who’d dragged him here, a crisply-dressed man he could tell personally worked for Ferdinand. There was something about the way he deflected all of Linhardt’s barbs with a stubborn smile, how polite he was about practically kidnapping the director from his office. The courier had appeared with neither an appointment or an announcement; he simply knocked on the door no matter how long he was ignored, until Linhardt answered and was informed that the prime minister wished to see him.

It was presented to Linhardt as a simple luncheon. Ferdinand sat across from him, radiant even in the shadow of the gazebo they were in, nearly blinding Linhardt with a smile intended as a friendly gesture, or at least a polite one, though the fangs didn’t help.

Neither did Ferdinand’s attempts at pleasantries. He knew Linhardt hated them but kept asking inane questions about Institute business anyway—things Linhardt didn’t know, things better to ask Hanneman, things he’d get back to him about in his next report—meandering around a one-sided conversation until he arrived at his reason for the summons.

“I was certain you received Her Majesty’s request, but it seems we never got a reply.” Ferdinand sipped from his teacup. “Did you forget to send one?”

Linhardt yawned, reaching under the table to rub some of the ache from his thigh. “Something like that.”

Ferdinand sighed. “You should know better than to ignore Edelgard, of all people. It would be ill-advised even if she were not the Emperor—”

A fountain gurgled away in the garden, just loud enough for Linhardt to tune his pointed ears to that and let the lecture wash over him while he studied the tea set. Pristine condition but old-fashioned, judging by the Crest of Seiros etched among the eagles rather than the modern star-based emblem. The ornate loops and swirls tired his eyes past a certain point and so he turned his attention to the liquid in his own teacup, an unusually black tea, fragrant in a way that wrinkled his nose but offered a comforting warmth. Ferdinand still liked those fruity teas, didn’t he?

“Are you even listening?”

“I’m awake,” Linhardt mumbled reflexively as his eyes fluttered open. When had they closed?

“Yes, but are you _listening_?”

Linhardt turned his gaze to the vines wound around the gazebo’s columns. “Why ask me?”

“You refuse to even look at me. How am I supposed to know if—”

“No, no.” Linhardt glanced at Ferdinand, who looked so wounded by the disinterest that he was in need of medical attention. “The commission. Hanneman agreed to it, isn’t that enough?”

“I am sure Her Majesty has her reasons.”

Linhardt leaned his elbow on the table so that he could rest his chin in his palm. “You don’t know?”

Ferdinand’s fingers drummed a tune against the tablecloth. His impeccable manners must have told him not to point at Linhardt’s teacup, though he did incline his head towards it. “Are you going to drink that?”

So he didn’t know, which begged the question of why the prime minister would be excluded from something described as of vital importance to the Empire. Linhardt was already sifting through some potential reasons. He had personal experience with the ways Her Majesty’s influence could unravel the mind, after all.

“...Say, how often _do_ you drink tea?” Linhardt asked.

Ferdinand finished his cup, then reached for the teapot between them; its lid rattled as he poured himself a refill. “When the mood strikes me.”

“What about coffee?”

A harsh _clink_ rang out as Ferdinand set the teapot down. “I cannot say I indulge in much of it these days.”

“Don’t you miss it?” An acquired taste was still a taste, after all, and Linhardt himself could remember its pleasant aroma, how sweet it could be once you tempered its bitterness…

Ferdinand’s exhale was long, slow, and followed by a pinched brow. “I understand your distaste for blood, believe me, but...” He swirled his cup and inhaled the smell, which smoothed the crease in his expression. “You’ll feel better if you have some. You’ll work better, too.”

“Is that supposed to motivate me?” Linhardt asked the reflection in his cup, which wavered from his soft laugh. He looked up. ”You’ve known me for how long, Ferdinand?”

“Ha! Long enough to know you _do_ care about your work. I’ve always found your focus admirable, really. Never led astray by such petty things as money, or status, or...” Sips punctuated his words, enough that his cup was empty again by the time he trailed off.

While Ferdinand downed another cup, Linhardt sloshed his own around, studying the patterns in its slow coagulation. How quaint, to serve the Emperor like this.

Had it always been this easy for Ferdinand? His role as prime minister demanded loyalty, yes, and he never hesitated to demonstrate his love for the Empire, but were loyalty and love really what drove him to reach for the teapot once more? This time it was empty and Ferdinand let out a quiet _ah_ before he sank back into his chair.

Linhardt nudged his own cup forward, one eyebrow raised.

“What kind of host would I be if I took my guest’s drink?” Ferdinand’s throat bobbed up and down when he swallowed. An enticing motion.

“Well, _I’m_ not thirsty.”

“Is that so? You look rather... _Ahem_.” Ferdinand cleared whatever less-than-proper observation he’d been about to make from his throat. “If this drink is not to your liking, then perhaps something at the next banquet will appeal to your delicate tastes.”

 _Delicate_ , he said, as if Linhardt were a withering flower in need of a little bloodbath to perk up. Did the prime minister now fancy himself a gardener?

“I’m not going.” Linhardt traced one clawed fingernail around his teacup’s rim. “And I think Hanneman is perfectly capable of conducting research on his own.”

Ferdinand winced at a particularly high-pitched scrape against the porcelain. “...A noble cannot escape from his duty.”

“His duty to gorge himself until he’s smothered the last of his wits?”

The table bumped as Ferdinand uncrossed his legs. “Hey now, I only wish to help. Not as a fellow countryman but as your _friend_ —”

“While I appreciate the concern, I’m sure you have far more noble duties to attend to.”

“I concede my earlier remark was perhaps insensitive,” Ferdinand said, a pout pulling at his lips, “but I cannot recall the last report I read that was penned by Director Hevring, not Professor Hanneman. The Emperor entrusted you with your position for a reason, and she is well within her rights to expect—”

“Do you recall the last cabinet meeting that was led by the prime minister?”

“And what would you know of such matters?” Ferdinand had one arm on the table now, elbow and all, with his hand clenched into a fist. Once he realized, his cheeks flushed and he smoothed down his cravat in a hurry. “If I did not call you out here, you’d sleep until the next millennium festival and we’d all be none the wiser. At least Bernadetta _writes_.”

“While I thank you for your hospitality, I’m afraid I can’t work on much of anything here.” Linhardt stood. “Perhaps I ought to”—the tablecloth’s opulent pattern swam in his vision—“ah, return…”

His hand slipped as he steadied himself, spilling his teacup in the process; he stared, transfixed by the arc of blood that soaked across the fabric until it was yanked out from underneath him. The tea set scattered onto the grass, one cup crunching under Linhardt’s boot when he backed away. Ferdinand sucked the bundled-up cloth with trembling hands, wide-eyed and eager—a dark expression that belonged on a man behind bars, reaching for Linhardt as he flinched—

“Hold a moment, please!” Ferdinand sputtered around the cloth, but by the time he spat it out Linhardt had stumbled from the gazebo, wincing in the sunlight, and was headed for the palace’s shaded halls.

◆◆◆

While in many ways he felt better after leaving Ferdinand and their grisly luncheon behind, Linhardt’s stomach growled whenever he passed a bundle of veins and capillaries in the hallway. Several of them stared, but he didn’t want to know why. Hopefully it was just because he looked out of place dressed as neither a servant or a guard or some visiting noble.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t recall where the library was. Those were calming places and he knew from past experience the Emperor had a fascinating collection. The only blood he’d have to worry about there were theoretical papercuts, though he still cringed at the thought.

There were other rooms he could box himself in, but for all his complaints about the sunlight he ended up finding a balcony to rest against. While it was still bright enough to make his eyes throb, the air here was fresher and the copper-tinged stink that permeated the entire palace was thinner. A compromise.

Linhardt squinted out over Enbarr. The canals flashed in the light; he scowled at them and kept his attention on the skyline, with its flat-topped buildings broken by towers that reached for the heavens. One of those was the Institute’s astral tower, which was small enough to pinch between his fingers from here. Enbarr University’s bell tower wasn’t that far from it; could they hear it ring in the palace? It was once part of Enbarr’s largest cathedral, meant to echo in every corner of the city, but that cathedral had been gutted long before Edelgard’s rule. Part of the Institute was former church property as well, a much more recent acquisition. Centuries, perhaps only decades from now, would travelers be able to tell that the Church of Seiros had been founded here?

He wanted them to know. It wasn’t like he’d any attachment to the church, but to see its bones refashioned until they were no longer recognizable…

His gaze wandered to the astral tower again. He'd given Ferdinand his answer and Ferdinand would probably relay that to Edelgard, which meant he was free to go. Probably. But the prime minister was so far removed from the situation he didn’t know why out of all the scholars in Fódlan she wanted the one who could barely stomach papercuts to study her blood.

Was Hubert at the root of it? He’d been the one to deliver the request, after all, but even once Linhardt factored in spite and lingering heartbreak, he couldn’t imagine that Hubert would torment him with Empire business. Much too unprofessional for a retainer of his caliber.

Then what were Edelgard’s thoughts on the matter? Not the Emperor’s thoughts—Edelgard’s.

Unfortunately, this was his best opportunity to find out. Linhardt rubbed some of the ache from his eyes, pinched his nose to prepare for the smell, and left the balcony.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has more blood than usual, mentions of wrist wounds (not self-inflicted), and mentions of disordered eating.
> 
> And [here's the art](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1euTD4wh0eCQ9USZWPyMRSqCjm9YrXmPi/view?usp=sharing) for this week! Features a Rhea cameo :'''')

The stairs leading up to the throne room left Linhardt breathless, fire burning in his lungs and his muscles protesting as he wheezed his way up those last few steps. It was still petitioning hours, wasn’t it? Maybe he’d petition for an elevator while he was here.

Before anything else, he needed to recover, and so he leaned against the nearest stone column and let himself slide to the floor. The guards on duty watched from afar. One of them looked like she was smirking at his exhaustion while the other was stone-faced in the way he expected guards to look.

...Most guards, anyway.

Metodey had been an imperial guard as far as he and Lysithea could tell, though it was hard to imagine someone so fidgety standing in front of a door or pacing back and forth in hallways for several hours of the day. It sounded like boring work—Linhardt was positive he couldn’t do it without falling asleep—and if it wasn’t boring then that meant there was an emergency, which didn’t sound any better. For whatever reason Metodey was adamant about returning to the position once he’d recovered, though neither he nor Lysithea had informed him that wouldn’t be possible—not while a crude imitation of him was on the city’s wanted posters.

The missive that demanded his arrest said he was a violent criminal. Some half-forgotten memory nagged at him that he’d seen Metodey somewhere before all this and the claims rang true, but it was best to leave the doors on those mental closets shut. They took all kinds at the Institute regardless of background, even if the curiosity almost made him ask the current guards about Metodey.

Regardless, there wasn’t much he could do from the floor. The stones were too uncomfortable for a nap even if he _wanted_ to catch some shut-eye, but if he fell asleep here he was certain the guards or someone else would prod him awake and then he’d just be annoyed. So despite how his lungs still burned, Linhardt stood and sucked in a breath, wrinkling his nose at the metallic smell that lingered in the air. Unavoidable this close to Edelgard.

Upon closer inspection he noticed the tiles that denoted a path to and from the throne room were stained an unappealing rust-red. Poor taste in style, he hoped.

“Do you have business with Her Majesty?” The stone-faced guard on the left asked when he approached. A woman, he assumed, though she wasn’t anyone he recognized.

Linhardt tried not to stand on one of the gross-looking tiles. “Ah, yeah, I’d like to see her.”

The guard on the right stared at him and Linhardt realized she wasn’t smirking—quite the opposite, in fact—but had a crescent scar carved into the edge of her mouth. Her grip on her lance tightened when she noticed his stare.

Both guards exchanged a look as if the red-faced haggard man in front of them was something to worry about, then the left one cleared her throat and spoke in a firm tone. “Petitioning hours are over.”

Now he wasn’t the best judge of time, but he’d glanced at a sundial along the way and was pretty sure they weren’t over—he hadn’t spent _that_ long catching his breath, and he hadn’t heard anything that signaled the end of the current hour. There was an active glyph in the throne room’s grandiose door, which provided red light to a star etched above a twin-headed eagle. That meant she was at least still inside.

“That’s unfortunate.” Linhardt rubbed his chin. “Was I mistaken about the time?”

The guard shook her head. “Her Majesty is hearing her last one for the day.”

His rub turned into tapping. “How long do you think that’ll take?”

“It’s the last—”

“But the hour isn’t up. So it’s still petitioning hours, and if they finish early—”

A metal clank rang out as she jabbed her lance’s shaft against the stones. “You’ll have to try another day, sir.”

“I’m certain she’ll want to see me. Oh, I haven’t introduced myself.” He went through the trouble of a proper bow. “I’m Director Hevring, of the Hevring Institute.”

“Then you’ll have to try another day, Director.”

Fair enough. Linhardt knew he wasn’t exactly a household name, not like the renowned Miss Arnault, nor did he want to be. But they had _something_ in common that might do the trick...

“Part of the Black Eagles Strike Force?” Still no reaction from the guard, though picking at that particular scab in his life made Linhardt wince. “I was _just_ having tea with the prime minister.”

The guard bowed her head ever so slightly. “Thank you for your service.”

There was nothing to thank in his book, first of all, and while he wasn’t inclined to waste any more breath arguing his chest burned in a way unrelated to physical exertion now. Against his better judgement he opened his mouth but before he could respond a smaller door, disguised in intricate carvings under the right eagle’s wing, groaned open.

A noble in yellow-trimmed finery speckled with red walked out. Former Alliance, perhaps. Their expression was grim and at first they didn’t spare a second glance for Linhardt, but a little match lit in Linhardt’s mind, so he shoved them aside—they gasped some protest—and stuck his head through the door.

“Hello, Edelgard!”

That was all he managed before two sets of arms took him by the elbows and threw him out. Rather than struggle, Linhardt went limp and let the guards do the work of holding him up.

“What do you think you’re doing?” The one he’d spoken with grunted, then gave up and let go, leaving her coworker to fumble with Linhardt.

He expected her to drop him, but she made a valiant effort to keep him upright. Linhardt shrugged in her grip as a response. The person he’d shoved adjusted their golden cape and huffed their way down the stairs, glancing over their shoulder to glare at him for good measure.

“Winola,” the other guard pleaded, “help—”

All she did was close the door and return to her post.

“Trying to sneak in? Did you really think that’d work?” Winola said after some time watching her coworker struggle.

“I wasn’t _sneaking_ ,” he said.

She looked past Linhardt. “Let him go, Joan.”

When Joan did drop him, it was a slow, awkward tumble that threatened to send them both to the floor. Winola rolled her eyes. By the time Linhardt had picked himself up and dusted his knees, ignoring the implications of the red-stained tiles he’d been on, the light above the throne room’s door had changed from red to blue.

All three of them stared up at it.

Winola ran some complex calculations in her mind about the matter. It was a familiar question—could she get away with ignoring it? Evidently she decided no, for she walked back to the smaller door and opened it.

“Don’t tell Hubert about this,” she hissed to Joan, who grabbed Linhardt by his elbow again and escorted him into the throne room.

Nausea seized Linhardt’s stomach.

The smell was bad enough when the door opened, but being inside felt like his head had been shoved into one of those vile carrion flowers. He fumbled around his pockets for his scented handkerchief, crushed it against his nose, and inhaled its calming oils even though he knew it was impossible for them to overpower the Emperor.

Edelgard sat on her slick black throne at the other end of the room, the throne itself wreathed in draconic horns and surrounded by rivers of blood, the source of that stench which permeated the entire palace. No, not quite—the source was Edelgard, who raised one of her blood-streaked wrists and beckoned him to come closer.

Instead he clung to Joan, who tried to shrug him off. This was a bad idea. He’d only been in here a handful of times before the Feasting War and fewer since for good reason.

“Y’know, this isn’t urgent,” he mumbled through his handkerchief, then tugged Joan’s arm back towards the door.

Distant as Edelgard’s voice was, it rang in his ears, impossible to ignore. “Don’t tell me you went through all that trouble just to say hello.”

Linhardt turned around long enough to bow. “Ah, that I did, Your Majesty. If you’ll excuse me...”

“Linhardt.” The Emperor’s tone made Joan tighten her grip on him.

Of course he wouldn’t be able to slip out of this so easily. Joan let go, but placed her hand between Linhardt’s shoulder blades and gave him a light push.

“Thank you,” Edelgard said as he approached the throne.

He stopped at the edge of a shallow, blood-filled trench, placed at the bottom of the stairs in the perfect position to catch supplicants who didn’t watch their step or lift their skirts. He wondered whose idea it was, whether it was some artistic statement or merely a way to tease the nobility.

Either way, it warded against Linhardt much as oil repelled water.

“I thought you were here to see Ferdinand.” From here he saw the quirked eyebrow on Edelgard’s pallid face and kept his focus there, rather than the open wounds at her wrists or what oozed from them.

“Already have.” Linhardt said, his voice still muffled. “I really was on my way out.”

“I haven’t seen you in ages. Come now, am I that repulsive to you?”

Linhardt cringed. “Repulsive is a strong word, don’t you think?”

“We can speak elsewhere if you’d like.” It was subtle, but the next part caught in her throat for a brief moment. “Though I’m afraid I can’t do much about the blood.”

No, she couldn’t.

When this all began he was still seeing Hubert, who would often complain about all the failed ways they’d tried to heal her split skin or at least temporarily staunch the flow. He’d even consulted Linhardt only to be informed that while Linhardt had solved his own bleeding problem years ago, he wasn’t keen to revisit the subject. Monthly had been awful enough; he couldn’t—didn’t want to—imagine what it felt like to do so daily. If it hurt, then she hid her pain well.

“Here is…” _Don’t say repulsive._ That would only upset her. “Fine. About your commission—”

Unfortunately, her wrist came back into view as she silenced him with a gesture, then dismissed both Joan and an attendant that Linhardt didn’t recognize. While they left he glanced around in search of Hubert, who was missing from Edelgard’s shadow today.

“I know it’s asking a lot of you,” she said once they were alone. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

Linhardt frowned behind his handkerchief. “Why me?”

Edelgard tapped her nails—blunt, human ones despite her bizarre condition—against the grates of her throne’s armrest. “You’re one of the Empire’s brightest when you apply yourself, and well-suited for the task.”

“Well-suited? You’re asking me to study your _blood._ ”

“Precisely. I trust you of all people won’t be tempted to misuse it,” she said. “I know how much you hate it, but you shouldn’t let fear rule your life.”

“I wouldn’t describe it in such drastic terms.”

“From what I’ve heard of the situation, it sounds drastic.”

Linhardt wrinkled his nose at her phrasing. Who’d framed it as such? Hanneman in some report? Hubert would call it an _inconvenience_ at most, wouldn’t he?

“What situation, exactly?”

“Linhardt...come here.” There was a soft edge to her voice, a dagger sheathed in velvet.

He thought she could answer his question from where she was, but the dregs of her blood in his veins tugged at his heartstrings. He felt like a marionette as he obeyed, his movements wooden and stiff over the blood-filled trench, stopping at the first stair until Edelgard waved him closer.

Being this close to her, she was anything but repulsive. Hunger had devoured his nausea; the only heartbeat he heard in the room was his own, not because the Emperor lacked one but because he couldn’t hear much over his own pulse as his eyes fixated on the red pearls welling up from her wrists.

His hand lowered his handkerchief of its own accord. It was useless, he told himself, when the smell was so strong he could taste copper on his tongue from it.

Edelgard took him by the chin, tilting her hand at practiced angles to examine the gaunt planes of his face without dripping blood onto him. “When was the last time you ate?”

“You’ll, ah, have to be more specific.”

“Anything. It seems like you’re starving yourself.” She released him and leaned back against her throne. “Are you?”

Linhardt’s face was hot where she’d touched.

“Sometimes I get so wrapped up in my work that I…” He wanted to say he forgot, that was all, but knew the Emperor wouldn’t believe him and that foreign, bloodborne influence in his thoughts reminded him that she’d want an honest answer. Linhardt wasn’t sure he had one. It wasn’t that he wanted to starve—she’d admonished him about fear, yet did she know what the hunger for her did to people?

He didn’t want to starve, but he didn’t want to see his mind warped and, if Metodey was any indication, his body that he’d so carefully constructed for himself wasn’t safe from further tampering.

“...I don’t know.”

“You’ve survived so much to make it here.” Edelgard leaned forward, offering him her bloodstained hand. “Don’t let that effort go to waste.”

Between his watering mouth and the smell-induced taste he tried to convince himself there was no need to drink, that he could politely decline. Nothing could compare to this, however, fresh from the Empire’s fountainhead herself. It was a taste he’d only imagined and, as he knelt at the throne, he realized he’d never done this before. It had always been mixed with something else or in an unsatisfyingly small vial.

The stairs were damp against Linhardt’s knees. Once he raised her wrist to his lips, Her Majesty’s warmth enveloped him, overwhelmed his senses with her generosity, her benevolence, her wisdom in choosing him. (For what, exactly, he couldn’t articulate.) His movements were sluggish, dreamlike, and while rationally he knew that he was awake, his mind wasn’t convinced. After every mouthful he was certain he’d wake up alone on his couch with an aching heart and an empty belly. 

It wasn’t until the Emperor commanded him to stop that he realized he was crying.


	7. BENEDICTION II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another Metodey POV chapter from char! CW for self-injury, and [here's the art](https://drive.google.com/file/d/11VKoNymYQK8-_MU6IkSAm4nt4saV2xP8/view?usp=sharing) for this chapter.
> 
> ...It's also been about a month since the first update! Thank you for joining us so far on Mr. Melin's wild ride

II. THE VULTURE

In the dark he had a long time to cower in the corner. Halls and rooms were the domain of the spymaster, and the Emperor had dragged him out from the hole he had secured himself in. She was leaving him to die for eating the leeches. He'd survived for nothing. Did she want the leeches on her after all? Wasn't it better to consume them for her? They deserved to die! Did she tolerate the lamprey and the nobles because it felt so good—no! Blasphemy! She was not moved by petty things—she was gracious, giving—it was him who—His throat was sore from his traitors' voice shrieking no matter how he scratched at it and he spit up blood and cried at the waste of it. It was the wrong way! It was supposed to go _in_ him.

He was whimpering, combing through the memory of clawing at the cold stone floor. The saint had woken up, and rested a warm hand gently on his cheek. _Shhhhh._

"Sorry," Metodey whispered, but he laced his fingers into the saint's fingers on his cheek. "Sorry. I'm being quiet."

"No, you're not," the saint said, with a gentle sigh, but he did not get up or push Metodey away. Metodey nodded, quickly. When the saint spoke to him, his voice gave Metodey the same hot flush as liquor. He tried to shove that away too, under his rib cage, into his stomach, to keep it.

Ah…he was distracted again. He was trying to piece the shards together. How had...the first benediction. Yes, then the Emperor—the Emperor's avatar, Lysithea, she insisted, that was their secret, for him to hold, her trust—she had returned with the light and seen the mess he had made, distraught and disgusting and smeared across his hands and mouth. He had begged her for her mercy. She had refused—but—because the saint had gentler hands. Yes. They had tied him, struggling, to a chair— _kindly_ —and pried his mouth open while he writhed and the saint's wrists so full of Her blood were so close to him, so close, the scent making his mouth water even drowned under the camphor and roses. He couldn't bite down with his mouth forced open and the pliers in it, he couldn't swallow, he couldn't—

"Ah, I've got it," Linhardt had said, but his face was pale and turned away. What suffering, on behalf of Metodey! For a moment Metodey was sure he was going to swallow the leech himself—but—no, he discarded it into a cup. That wasn't fair! It belonged to _him!_

"Why did you want leeches? Surely not to eat them," he'd asked, mildly, but Metodey was too busy gasping for breath and savoring the fresh taste of blood running down his so much less swollen throat to answer. He could answer now, if he were asked! Metodey buried his face against the side of the saint's head, into his soft hair, to stifle his giggle. It was a metaphor! A poem. And he called himself a researcher! It was funny, too, that he called himself _just_ a researcher...it reminded him of...

_But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, feed'st thy lightest flame with self-substantial fuel,_

_Making a famine where abundance lies, thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel._

"Metodey. Please, be quiet."

Yes, he would try, he would prove to sweet Linhardt that he was being quiet by not responding, not chewing on the soft pad between his thumb and pointer finger, not squirming to position Linhardt as close to him as possible. He'd disposed of the leech but left Metodey in the dark again and he hid and thankfully survived though he was sure at any moment the vulture would step from the shadows wreathed in crackling indigo too dark to look at, but no it was Linhardt who again returned and asked Metodey to stop mutilating and gnawing on his own hands.

A surprising request—he hadn't realized he'd been doing it, and then once he'd stopped, it itched at him how hungry he was and how badly he wanted to bite down—and Linhardt gave him a leech, a _dead one_ that would not bite back, and he put it between his molars and chewed it until it popped and separated into muscly strings. He was so thankful that there was something he could chew besides his fingers. And they promised not to leave the room dark, that if he remained quiet the vulture wouldn't find him, for of course a saint wouldn't turn him in—though—even still there was something appealing about the vulture with his beak in Metodey's liver—

Metodey bit down on the pillow the saint's head rested on and forced the squirming feeling through him into stillness as though he were strangling the vulture instead. A satisfying thought. More than satisfying, _ah_ —No, no, quiet, quiet, quiet, he wanted to whisper to the pillow, but whispering wasn't quiet enough. He wanted to write it down in the journal he had been given. Not just the vulture, but all of those who had died by his blades or by his side during the war. Their blood mingled in this thought, all the same color, the same streams, the same rivers— _Would not the blood of these make a great sea? No fish would swim in it—_

It was triumph, the triumph of the obsidian palace drowning in blood, and the bones of the church under it, white and crimson, black feathers, the fingers of corpses crunching under his boots as he strode with her glorious army, a ride of red borne on black wings and a crimson sea stretching before him on the shore of glass! All were equal, all were equal in death no matter their station, only the blood of the Emperor lifted them up, and he was so grateful to kneel before her and accept!

But not like this! Not long after the leeches Linhardt had held a mirror up to his cage. Metodey didn't recognize himself until he touched his own skin and so did the creature in the mirror. He was filthy and his eyes were black around his amber irises—though that made them shine more brightly in contrast, he wasn't so displeased with those or the claws after he got over the startlement—and his beautiful hair was in clumps and his skin was dry and scabbed and red. Unpresentable. Disgusting. He would be rightfully removed from duty if he showed up like this. And the Emperor would regard him with that gentle distaste in her eyes. He didn't deserve it, not the gentleness nor the disdain.

Something broke inside him in the way he wanted so desperately to break the lying glass and he backed away from the mirror, whimpering, panic mounting inside him until Linhardt said with his soft voice like the soothing taste of blood, that if Metodey sat _still_ he could at least be made presentable, though the changes, he feared, were irreversible.

So Linhardt sat next to him and with a straight razor shaved his face and cut the pathetic remains of his hair to a close buzz while Metodey told him that if these were the Emperor's changes under the Emperor's will, reshaping his body for her duties, though he didn't understand the changes he knew his vanity was not misplaced and he would be proud to stand in front of her— _clean_ —even with disappointingly short-shaven hair—and half the reason he talked so much while the saint made listening noises was because the razor's silver sheen and the graze of it against his cheek made him want Linhardt to cut into his throat and bite down like the vulture had, or harder, and drink from _him_ , please, ah, ecstasy, but he waited and waited for that feeling to pass with his body tense until at last Linhardt brushed the back of his head and that sent a pleasant shiver down his back, and he shoved his face into the blade before it could be pulled away.

The razor sliced his cheek. His own blood ran wet on his now-smooth skin, and Linhardt dropped the razor and pulled his hand away and had to hold the chair and look away and swallow. The swallow made his neck move enticingly—Metodey ran his fingers across the cut on his cheek and sucked the blood from his talons and thought of Linhardt's soft skin.

How strange and amusing, that a saint should look so sallow at the sight of a little blood. Didn't he know he himself had flesh and blood in him? Metodey offered to show him, and Linhardt held the rose-smelling handkerchief to his face and averted his eyes and refused, how polite, but that was why he was a saint, after all. To have the strength to refuse a feast for a leech. He refused, and he left, and the next day he returned.

Metodey began to look forward to his returning.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for one instance of self-injury (cut wrist, but not in a suicidal sense) and references to past self-harm/the mindset surrounding that
> 
> The last time Metodey directly showed up was chapter 3...Since I only post once a week, it's been awhile, hasn't it? [Here's the art](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VQMkbgzJkrGzRH_C2H_j7cUbARVRIzCk/view?usp=sharing) for this chapter!

It was customary at the Institute to burn contaminated materials as part of their efforts to regulate access to Her Majesty’s blood. Linhardt didn’t know why he’d been allowed outside the palace with stained clothing, or imperial strategies for regulation when there was so much more to keep track of. He’d left in a daze, unable to recall much about the return trip besides the sweetness that lingered on his tongue whenever he sucked on his jacket’s sleeve.

That jacket was with the rest of his outfit in a laboratory fireplace now, where flames licked away the last traces of her blood. Even after he donned a new robe and washed the blood from his hair and scraped it out from under his fingernails, he still felt unclean.

Since he’d been dragged from his office it’d thrown off his whole schedule, or at least it would’ve if he had one. The only constant was a brief trip to the isolation ward to check on Metodey, though he couldn’t recall if either he or Lysithea was supposed to do that tonight.

Hanneman would know if she stopped by, but then Linhardt would have to endure questions about his impromptu trip to the palace or the research everyone thought he’d agreed to...He didn’t have it in him to protest. Not with so much of Her Majesty fresh in his veins, when the mere thought of disappointing her with his refusal made his heart ache. It was an artificial pain, induced by whatever curse her blood carried, but the knowledge didn’t stop his reaction.

Even if Lysithea had fed Metodey already, there were other reasons to see him. Curiosity gnawed at Linhardt in place of his earlier hunger, much easier to sate, so he took a scalpel and a vulnerary from the lab, then mulled over an experiment on his way to the elevator. 

◆◆◆

Metodey’s voice with its sharp peaks and sudden dips greeted Linhardt from the end of the hall. Tonight’s recitation was some bloody dirge about the Feasting War that had Linhardt rubbing his temple; at the cell he found Metodey hunched over a rust-red stain on the floor, tracing aimless shapes with the point of one talon. Torn paper littered the floor like ash, mingling with the carcass of a discarded book.

“Is this your review?” Linhardt crouched and picked up a leather scrap, putting him at eye-level with Metodey. “Or were you that hungry?”

“It wasn’t very good.” Metodey said with a rattling laugh. “Paper and ink and skin—no taste at all.”

Metodey’s black-tinged eyes searched Linhardt for something that would signal a meal and narrowed into a squint when he found nothing. He didn’t lunge for the bars, however, nor did he start spitting out curses or pleas. Instead he huffed into the mess around him, fluttering paper through the bars to Linhardt’s side.

Linhardt stood back up; Metodey lurched to his feet and continued to stare. There was no fresh blood, Linhardt noted, and though he still had raised bumps along his cheeks and arms, nothing seemed to have broken skin.

“Did Lysithea see you today?”

Metodey’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know.”

Ah, perhaps the name was confusing. He might get a better response if he asked about the Emperor, but it seemed unwise to encourage that delusion. “Has anyone come to see you today?”

Now Metodey rolled his bottom lip between his teeth. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“How am I supposed to know what day it is?”

“Silly me, I…” Linhardt glanced at the nearby lantern, a poor substitute for the sun. “...Hadn’t considered that.”

Metodey squinted as if uncertain about whether or not that was sarcastic, though his slit pupils bloomed wide when Linhardt beckoned him closer. He examined the bumps on Metodey’s face—much better than previous visits, despite the way he tracked Linhardt’s movements with a ravenous gaze. A scab flecked away under Linhardt's thumb, revealing a fresh red scale, and he was thankful there wasn’t any blood. Disgusting, but tolerable.

“What’s on today’s menu?” Metodey asked.

His breath reminded Linhardt to step back; he pulled out his handkerchief and rubbed his nose to clear away the foul odor. Outside of the palace, where a similar stench would linger for generations, the scented oils in the cotton actually provided some relief. He slipped his free hand into one of his pockets, where he fumbled past the vulnerary.

The scalpel’s leather case was soft under his thumb. “There’s something I’d like to try.”

The fog he’d grown accustomed to had lifted. Was it due to her blood? That was the obvious explanation and it wasn’t that he doubted this, but there’d been something about the warmth, the vitality on his tongue that couldn’t be bottled. Unpleasant as the reason was, he felt human when he could see the world in vivid clarity, free from the film of blood and scum that had congealed around his thoughts as of late.

Now he understood what the Empire wanted to preserve.

Linhardt pocketed his handkerchief and removed the scalpel from its case. The metal flashed in the lantern’s wan light; Metodey gripped the bars with both hands and pressed himself closer. He couldn’t hear it, but Linhardt could tell Metodey’s pulse raced—it was clear from his wide eyes, the slight parting of his lips, the flush to his cheeks. How nice not to hear someone else’s heart. Linhardt’s recent meal had quieted whatever hunting instinct tuned his senses to the presence of blood, and while he knew it would be a temporary reprieve, it was a welcome one all the same.

He could, however, hear his own pulse flutter when he rolled up his sleeve, then held the trembling scalpel to his own wrist. The pain would be brief and after all he'd endured, what was a little cut? It wouldn't be the first time. Bloodshed he could control, not like—not like what happened out there. When it was someone else, even if he drew the blood he couldn't control it, could only stand there feeling like a monster as he noted the color, the viscosity, the smell—

Linhardt cut his thoughts short before his resolve faltered. The wound stung and he didn’t dare look down when he offered his wrist to Metodey, who grabbed his hand and yanked him against the bars.

“ _Gentle,_ ” Linhardt hissed as the scalpel clanged against the floor. “Be gentle.”

Metodey loosened his grip. Linhardt fixed his gaze where the wall and ceiling intersected, studying the cracks in the masonry while Metodey sank to his knees and lapped at the wound.

“Soft,” Metodey whispered. “So soft.”

The tickle of air on an open cut made Linhardt’s fingers twitch. Temptation threatened to draw his eyes away from the wall, though he squeezed them shut before he slipped, which left his senses with the velvety flat of Metodey’s tongue as well as his lips, gnawed at so often they were smooth. It didn’t hurt as much as he expected. Was there something about the process, or perhaps his saliva…?

While Metodey drank, Linhardt used his other hand to retrieve the vulnerary from his pocket; it trembled in his grip as he bit the cork off.

“Ah, my lady...”

Linhardt jerked his hand back. “Leave her out of this.”

A horrid sight, his wrist streaming red with streaks where Metodey had tried to hold on. Linhardt’s knees wobbled but he leaned against the bars to stay upright, his stomach threatening to rebel. Metodey spilled frantic apologies as he took Linhardt’s hand again and guided it through the bars. No pulling or tugging or yanking this time.

Instead it was the kind of touch he thought this man incapable of: a lover’s caress.

“ _Linhardt,_ ” he murmured in-between long, slow licks. “Linhardt, yes, this is your— _your_ benediction.”

Warmth spread wherever he touched, an infectious pleasure that sucked the pain from Linhardt’s body. Metodey spoke his name as a prayer, as something sacred to hold in his mouth, and Linhardt’s blood answered the call with its flow.

Was this how it felt for the Emperor? No wonder she never stopped anyone from indulging. But the smell made bile sting in the back of Linhardt’s throat, nasty, unhygienic—

“That’s enough,” he wheezed.

Metodey’s grip tightened.

“Stop. Now, or else—” _I’ll puke,_ Linhardt didn’t say, for fear of speaking it into existence.

Vague as it was, the implied threat did the trick. Linhardt cracked one eye open long enough to tip his vulnerary over the wound. It burned away the feeling of Metodey’s lips, though they returned not long after the cut finished healing. Metodey licked at the smears and while it absolved Linhardt of cleaning the blood off himself, this vile man’s slobber wasn’t much better.

Once he deemed himself clean enough, he slipped out of Metodey’s grip. “Next time stop when I say so.”

“Stop? Yes, I’m sorry, so sorry, I—” Metodey’s expression was quick to twist with anxiety, and just as quick to split apart with a grin. Blood—Linhardt’s blood, the Emperor’s blood—was smeared around his fangs. “Next time?”

“Don’t get your hopes up.”

Something rotten bubbled up inside Linhardt at the sight. His hand still shook as he tucked away the empty bottle, retrieved his handkerchief, and scrubbed at the filth that clung to Metodey’s face. When he slumped against the cell, light-headed and woozy, Metodey rose from his knees to keep him steady. Metodey’s purr was inhuman but oddly comforting, and when his arms snaked through the bars to hold Linhardt, the sound reverberated in his own chest.

“You aren’t a leech.” Metodey’s breath against his ear sent a shiver through him, even if the smell still wrinkled his nose. “No, you aren’t one of them. You”—Metodey squeezed him—”are radiant. Merciful. Delicious.”

A curious thing, this sudden affection. Blood-induced, no doubt, in the way that any good meal could lift one’s spirits. He suspected it wouldn’t last, as he was no substitute for the Emperor, deified in Metodey’s eyes, and had no desire to join her in such an echelon—not when this was the most human he’d felt in weeks.

They sank to the floor together while Metodey whispered into the crook of his neck, “I know how good it feels. Let me—”

Eyes drooping shut, Linhardt turned himself around so that his back rested against the other man. “Hush. I’m trying to sleep.”

◆◆◆

Sleep, as it so often was these days, was little more than a brief reprieve from being awake. Linhardt knew he was in a dream because the rush of the Emperor’s blood comforted him as he knelt before her—no, it wasn’t the sound, but the warmth of her open wrists around him as she pulled him into the heart of the Empire, an embrace that tightened until her blunt nails pierced his skin but in the dream there was no pain, only a spurt of his own blood that streamed into one of countless tributaries.

He was in the midst of dissolving into the great Adrestian ocean when a sharp touch held him together. Warm like Her Majesty, yes, but he knew he was waking up because it _hurt._

“Get away from him!”

Such a shrill voice. “I’m sleeping,” Linhardt mumbled even as the tight arms around him thwarted his efforts.

A chill zipped through him as the air in his vicinity cooled and there was a flash bright enough to hurt through his closed eyes. He cracked them open to shadows swirling around fell geometry that bubbled from a magic array, a blurry form at its center—Lysithea, his thoughts pieced together from the shock of the spell’s ferocity and her ivory hair.

The chill spread through Linhardt when the arms left; he slumped back against the bars and heard a scrabble of claws on stone behind him. At his current height the array at Lysithea’s feet dominated his vision, still eye-searingly bright even after he raised one arm to block his view.

“You’re going to blind me,” he said, though it was lost in the howl of magic. “Isn’t this a bit much?”

The hallway dimmed when Lysithea dispelled whatever it was she was about to unleash. Barely-suppressed coals of hostility smoldered in her eyes as she leaned down to drag him up by his elbow. They were both frail, however, so she didn’t get far, but Linhardt got the message and stood on his own. Still, she seemed to be doing quite well tonight if that striking entrance was any indication.

“Are you okay?” Lysithea held his wrist and gasped at a faint smear of blood, then yanked up his sleeve. “What happened?”

Her spell's afterimage haunted his eyes no matter how he rubbed them. “I was trying to sleep.” It was strange how cold he felt without...ah, Metodey.

Metodey, who cowered in the darkest corner of his cell, his eyes glowing white disks that reflected the lantern’s light.

“You’re scaring him,” Linhardt said.

“Good!” Lysithea glared into the cell. “What did he _do?_ ”

“He didn’t...He had some of my blood.”

The array flared to life once more; darkness condensed in Lysithea’s hand until he took her wrist and lowered it, not that this stopped Metodey from shrieking and covering his face.

Linhardt groaned when he leaned down, then picked up the scalpel with its dried brown stain and offered it to her. “I gave it to him.”

She took it with a scowl. “Alone? I thought you were smarter than that.”

“We can’t all be blessed with your intellect, Professor Ordelia.”

“You’re lucky I decided to show up.” She pointed the scalpel at Metodey. “He could have killed you!”

“Me?” Metodey peeked out from between splayed fingers, his voice shrill. “Kill Linhardt?”

Whatever peace Linhardt felt from the...the moment earlier drained from him, leaving frustration in its wake. “Yes, he could have”—he raised his voice over Metodey’s tirade about the indignity of the accusation—“but he didn’t.”

The claims on the missive that demanded his arrest sprang to mind— _dangerous, use caution, wanted dead or alive._ Preferably dead, he’d gathered. Apparently he’d targeted other nobles for their blood, all Crested, all inoculated. Oddly precise targets with some impressive break-ins for someone they’d found delirious and scavenging out of a sewer. His own distant memories still agreed with the claims even if he tried not to pay those any mind, but in the face of observable evidence, well...The majority of Metodey’s violence had been directed towards himself. He listened to reason. Wasn’t really a threat.

“I think he’s ready to be moved.”

“Excuse me?”

“Look, he’s…” Linhardt looked to Metodey, curled up and begging his vision of the Emperor for mercy, who rebuked him with her glare. “He’s not dangerous.”

Lysithea’s expression smoothed out as she blinked, only for her scowl to return in full force when she stepped closer to Linhardt. “Did you forget what he tried with me?”

“Forgive me, Your Majesty, I—I was a leech.” Metodey crawled back towards the cell bars and kneeled in supplication. “A leech with a leech’s thoughts. A filthy worm, a parasite, not even worth your crushing heel—”

“Be _quiet._ ” She stomped her foot. It got Metodey to shut his mouth.

Who could fault her skepticism? Metodey had introduced himself to one of Adrestia’s most powerful mages by lunging for her blood. A case of mistaken identity, they’d come to realize, but that he’d been willing to attack even the Emperor at that point...

“He was _starving._ ”

“So?” Lysithea walked to the other side of the hall, away from him and Metodey. “I don't see you going after anyone.”

Linhardt clutched at his own stomach. Right now he felt satisfied despite the recent blood loss. He hated that it took something so foul for him to feel like himself, but compared to the Linhardt of yesterday—if you could even say that was him, the Linhardt who wanted to swipe at his coworkers and was desperate enough to drink his own blood—well. Lysithea wouldn’t understand, nor did he want her to.

In lieu of a verbal explanation, Linhardt slipped his wrist back through the bars. Metodey’s shoulders trembled but he remained where he was, albeit muttering to himself.

“He’s no longer starving.” Linhardt rested his hand on top of Metodey’s hair. “Ergo, he’s no longer dangerous.”

Lysithea still winced at the display. “Then what would _you_ have us do with him?”

“I don’t think we should keep him down here.”

“...Will you turn him in?” For all her blatant animosity toward Metodey, her voice was hesitant.

“And let him be killed?” Linhardt slipped his hand away to pinch the bridge of his own nose. “This is the first case like his I’ve seen.”

Judgement flashed in Lysithea’s eyes, the sort that usually preceded a lecture, but in its place was a thought he preferred to leave unvoiced: “Hubert probably knows he’s here.”

Now that incited a riot in the cell. Metodey lunged forward, still on his knees, his grip white-knuckled on the bars while he begged for their protection. “The shadows—I’ll hide there. I know I can.” He latched onto Linhardt’s sleeve. “Please, you can’t let him find me, but—I’ll kill him. I’ll rip his throat out, that’s what I’ll do, take back everything he stole—”

They turned to him in unison, Linhardt resting his face in his palm, Lysithea hissing at him to be quiet again. “We’re not taking you to Hubert,” she added, then turned to Linhardt. “But I don’t know where you expect to hide from him. Shadows are the last place I’d pick.”

Linhardt lowered his hand. Metodey still clung to his sleeve. Lysithea stared, not at Linhardt but at his sleeve, until he pulled it free and inspected the fabric for any damage.

Finding none, he looked up and offered her a conciliatory smile. “I have some ideas.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two title drops in one chapter! The scene with Linhardt giving Metodey some blood was actually one of the first things written, back when I thought this would be a one-shot, and then maybe something with a few short chapters...


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can see this week's art [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zTY2Q9ZTHUujIvjay4W1WMMEhBIi1GfB/view?usp=sharing)...and I haven't indicated parts, but by the way this chapter is the end of part 1! There's also a bonus this week at the end

Discretion was crucial at the Institute, given the nature of certain research and the precious relics enshrined here. Even though it was built with this in mind, choosing somewhere discreet enough to hide Metodey wasn’t a simple task. Not for a lack of options—there were secret passages and esoteric elevator sigils and all sorts of nooks and crannies—but all these and more had Hubert’s long shadow cast over them. He knew enough sensitive information would end up here that he oversaw its construction, and Linhardt was certain that spiders lurked among his staff who’d send reports to his web. Frustratingly clever man, that von Vestra.

But Linhardt never thought he’d weaponize his secret retreats in a battle of wits. There were several rooms dedicated to this in the Institute, each with their own configuration of blankets and cozy furniture in case of emergency naps. Whether it was Hanneman tracking him down for some grisly work or relentless apprentices in their quest for knowledge or scribes who needed him to sign something, he needed these sanctuaries. Everyone knew where his office was, after all, and determined souls would just take the stairs if he blocked the elevator’s access to it. Someday elevators would become widespread enough that everyone would use them, he was certain, and then fewer people would go out of their way to use the stairs.

Hubert knew about his hidden rooms, of course—the one in the astral tower, the ones connected to the library, the ones only a short distance from the elevator—and Linhardt had allowed him the joy of each discovery even if it meant he had to endure lectures about his working habits.

It was worth it all to keep this one secret that even the Emperor’s shadow had yet to stick his meddlesome fingers in.

“Don’t worry about air,” Linhardt informed Metodey as he followed him down a ladder. “Though I do hope you aren’t claustrophobic.”

The ladder was hidden under that dreadfully heavy mahogany table in his office, one that Caspar had insisted he could lift every time he visited. Well, that was before his transformation. He couldn’t fit through the door now and while he could easily lift it these days, little did he know all it took to move was tracing a simple sigil.

Underneath the table and a rug, through a trapdoor, and down this ladder was a small room. Sparsely furnished like all his other dens, though the bed here was a folding cot he’d smothered in blankets and pillows stuffed with the finest pegasi down until it approximated something comfortable. It’d been hell to squeeze through the trapdoor, even folded up.

...Metodey was going to ruin all those pillows, wasn’t he? But first he flopped onto his bed and buried his face in one. “Smells just like you.”

Linhardt sniffed his robe’s sleeve, still unable to note anything out of the ordinary. Of course he wouldn’t know his own scent. Curiosity pricked at him about the matter anyway. “What do I smell like?”

“Delicious.”

Linhardt lowered his sleeve. “Informative as ever.” 

Heedless of the sarcasm, Metodey lifted his head long enough to nod before he found a different pillow to snort.

Linhardt went to the lone bookshelf in the room, already resigned to buy new pillows. He’d prepared the room for Metodey—cleaned it with Lysithea’s help, even—and had swapped out the books he cared about with blank journals. He’d recently borrowed a volume of poetry from the university library; whenever Lysithea next asked about it he’d have no idea where it ended up. One shelf was clear of books entirely, stocked instead with vulneraries and mixtures of vinegar mouthwash.

“Do be careful in here,” Linhardt said, leaning against the bookshelf with his arms crossed. “Don’t eat anything that’s not food.”

“I’d never—”

Linhardt raised a hand to shush him. “People will hear if you’re loud. Through the vents, in my office—hard to determine the exact threshold, but let’s not test that.”

“I’m quiet. Very quiet.” Metodey was sprawled out on his back with his head upside down. “How else can I hunt?”

“Of course. Can’t imagine why I’d think otherwise.”

Metodey’s eyes narrowed. Perhaps he was starting to catch on.

“Now,” Linhardt knelt and plucked one of the journals from the bookshelf, then held it open. “I know you like your poems, so when you feel the urge put it in here, alright?”

Whatever suspicions Metodey had about the teasing vanished in his wide eyes. He crawled off the bed, snatched the journal up and, after sniffing it, flipped through the pages. While he appraised the journal, Linhardt slipped a bundle of charcoal writing sticks from his robe and set them on top of the shelf. They’d smear, but perhaps Metodey would find something poetic in the impermanence. It seemed wiser than entrusting him with sharp-tipped quills.

“So many gifts. How very kind of you, Linhardt.” Metodey sighed, grinning even as he tossed the book aside like a paper wrapper.

Linhardt picked it back up and frowned at the bent pages, then smoothed them out before returning it to the shelf. There were many ways people spoke his name—with annoyance, respect, occasional fondness—but he couldn’t recall the last time it was said with such reverence.

“...You’ve spent quite some time in, ah, less-than-ideal conditions.”

It was difficult to call this an improvement. The comforts were shallow ones, things easily transported from one room to another save for that cot, and it wasn’t a livable size. Metodey's cell had been bigger—all the cells in the isolation ward were, on the off chance their occupants sprouted wings or doubled in size overnight. He’d exchanged one prison for another, really. How troubling that he couldn’t tell the difference.

No, he seemed content to clink some of the bottles together and smile at the sound, his grin distorted and ghoulish through the glass.

“Vulneraries,” Linhardt said. “Just in case. And the yellow ones are a rinse for your mouth.”

This prompted Metodey to pop the cork off one of the vinegar mixtures and suck it down.

“You’re not supposed to drink them.”

While Metodey doubled over coughing, Linhardt sat on the edge of the bed and made a mental note to leave a waterskin down here. Wine, maybe? No, Metodey seemed prone to overindulgence, so that would be unwise...Of course, he’d rather have blood. A man-sized leech...

Unlike leeches, In a strictly nutritional sense the Emperor’s blood wasn’t a necessary part of their diet. Food still provided that, even if Linhardt struggled with soups (the liquid was often too close in texture), meats (animals once had blood in them and tasted so bland without it), fish (tolerably bloodless but unsatisfying), vegetables (lifeless), and bread-based dishes (crumbly like dust on his tongue)...Well. One problem at a time.

The bed sank when Metodey joined him on it, his chest rattling with suppressed coughs. Linhardt sighed and rubbed small circles into his back; at first Metodey flinched, but after a moment his muscles relaxed, and once he was done coughing he shifted closer until their thighs touched. His offer from the other day echoed in Linhardt’s thoughts— _let me_ —and charged the static air between them, ready to shock.

“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” Linhardt turned his gaze to the bottles on the shelf.

Metodey swallowed. “Always.”

His eyes still averted, he brushed hair away from his neck, exposing its pale arch. “That sounds dreadful.”

“All part of the test.” Metodey’s breath tickled against his skin with a sour whiff of vinegar.

But he didn’t bite. Good.

Linhardt stood and plucked a vulnerary from the shelf, rubbing his neck with his free hand. “What, exactly, are you being tested on?”

In his peripheral vision Metodey looked deep in thought, one gnarled claw curled around his chin, eyebrows furrowed as he gnawed his lip. “Patience.”

Not a bad response. Linhardt joined him on the bed again, bottle in hand, and pulled a handkerchief from his robe. He preferred to think of it as a mustard shade rather than puke-yellow, though it darkened to an olive green under the bottle’s blue-tinged liquid. He soaked it enough to last at least a few minutes, then set it aside.

“You’re doing a fine job so far.” Linhardt leaned over Metodey with one hand against his chest; the other man followed every guided brush of his fingers until they were lying beside each other, barely able to fit on the cot. “I suppose you deserve a reward.”

Metodey blinked. Folded his hands on his chest, bounced his leg. Waited. Were it not for the fidgeting, Linhardt could nod off like this. It was...nice to have someone next to him. But the fretting and jiggling would ruin any nap, and Metodey couldn’t take the hint—he was going to make Linhardt do it all, wasn’t he?

Linhardt’s chest heaved with a sigh as he patted it. “Come here.”

Like a bear trap, Metodey sprang with eager arms and buried his face ear-to-chest against Linhardt. Both of their hearts raced, both of them must hear the rush of their shared blood calling to one another in their veins. Begging to be opened, reunited, beating to the Emperor’s rhythm—

Linhardt squeezed the back of Metodey’s neck, rubbing his thumb over the jagged hair there. “Don’t get anything on me. Or the pillows.”

“Does that mean I can—”

“And don’t ask me to keep thinking about this.” He tugged his robes open enough to expose his neck.

Metodey nodded, already breathless as he climbed on top of Linhardt and peeled away more fabric. How pragmatic to avoid staining his robes, and that it allowed Metodey to nip at his collarbone with bloodless affection was...convenient. 

“Such kindness,” Metodey whispered, stroking two talons up and down Linhardt’s jugular. “Ever-flowing kindness. So very kind, Linhardt…”

Their sharp tips pricked his skin when he swallowed. Despite this, he wrapped his arms around Metodey’s back. “Quit saying my name like that. It’s creepy.”

Once Metodey extended his fangs, every muscle in Linhardt’s body tensed. Eyes squeezed shut, he waited for the needling pain, dug his claws into Metodey’s tunic, tried not to squirm or else it might hurt even more—

“Nervous?” Metodey asked.

“Hurry up before I change my mind.”

But Metodey plied him with kisses, first at his neck and then along his chin, though Linhardt turned his head away once he smelled the vinegar on Metodey’s lips. Somewhere during this Metodey’s knee ended up between his legs, an easy distraction from the sharp pressure where fangs pierced his skin and the ache that spread from the wound until it settled much lower.

But why? He’d heard of bites like this in battle, in banquets gone wrong, in dark alleys that brought patients to the Institute—surely there was no pleasure to be found in such monstrous pain?

The researcher in him wanted to find out. He kept still aside from creeping his hand towards his handkerchief, not wanting to induce real pain with Metodey’s fangs still in him, and once he’d grabbed it he breathed a command to stop.

“Light-headed,” Linhardt mumbled to the stones above them, pressing the handkerchief against his neck. “Even better than before.”

Once he lifted the healing cloth, taking care not to look at the inevitable stains, Metodey returned to his neck. At first Linhardt thought he’d have to shoo him away, but no, he was only cleaning up smears with his tongue.

“Mm, stings my lips,” Metodey said.

“...Euphoric for both participants.” Metodey nodded at this and, distantly, Linhardt was pleased he knew the word. “Perhaps due to, ah, the context.”

“Now I’m no scholar, but shouldn’t you try again to find out?” There was a husky note to his voice.

Linhardt heard it in his own voice, too. “Excellent suggestion.”

◆◆◆

It was an enlightening, albeit disgusting, experience. Just his luck that someone like this would want to cuddle afterwards. Metodey had locked his arms around Linhardt with the stained handkerchief in his hand—that cloth would be burned as soon as possible—and nuzzled the spot he’d bit, which didn’t hurt at all. Now Linhardt was certain there was some analgesic property to the poison that coursed through their veins.

It must be poison to warp their bodies and minds the way it did, leaving them sickly, needy, _hungry_ —always that hunger, lurking under the civilized veneer they projected. In this moment it was quiet, but Linhardt knew that wouldn’t last. He pressed one claw to the inside of Metodey’s wrist, traced a line across his ulnar artery. Strip away that varnish of decorum and people like him were the heart of the Empire, anemic in purpose as they gorged themselves on Her Majesty, much as she had done to her enemies.

Metodey’s steady breaths suggested that he was asleep. Good.

“I’ll confess I’m rather sick of it all.” Linhardt slipped the handkerchief from Metodey’s hand, careful to keep the last clean edge pinched between the tips of his claws. “Might as well do something about this mess,” he yawned and tossed it aside. “After a nap.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...the bonus at the end is [the implied sexual content](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25108741/chapters/60830149)


	10. BENEDICTION III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another bit of metopov from char! There's a couple references to self-harm, but nothing graphic.
> 
> [Here's the chapter art](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eli0SYwIhbwGxdOdcbuiegQFD2JI50NR/view?usp=sharing)! I think it's neat to compare to [the first benediction art](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gCkZAO7MVoXsV9Rk6e6rW44f5vyc5n9O/view?usp=sharing), as well as [chapter 8](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VQMkbgzJkrGzRH_C2H_j7cUbARVRIzCk/view?usp=sharing) <_<

III. HONEY

Patience.

That was why Metodey had been sent here. He had to learn, he had to learn that patience, that the saint returned to him even after refusing his gift, not because he wanted anything, only to return. The leeches ate anything offered to them, gluttonous and indiscriminate. They returned to gorge. They didn't care. They knew nothing but hunger, distended empty stomachs. The leeches called themselves nobles but they didn't care for the ideals of the Emperor, her guidance, they were only tricked into her service through their wanton hunger for blood or power, any blood, it only happened to be hers this time—it had been the church's before—and he wasn't like them even though he had the same sucking hunger—

Linhardt exhaled, a sigh laced with resignation, and Metodey felt the saint's hands move to his shoulders, to shift Metodey's weight off of the other man.

"Wait, wait, wait, don't go, you haven't slept," Metodey said, his voice rising, his own hands trailing to Linhardt's arm but not—not clutching at his sleeves. Wheedling, he could try wheedling. "You said you were tired, you should rest with me." Through the ache of the absence of Linhardt's warm touch he tried to assure himself that Linhardt could leave if he wanted to. Surely he would return, and Metodey wouldn't be left alone in the dim bedroom with just books and charcoal and pieces of memory for company. 

"I nodded off," Linhardt said, mildly, sitting up and buttoning the collar of his robes. "But I've told you I can't sleep if you keep mumbling to yourself."

Panic mounted like a whine in Metodey's throat but he forced it down, to roost uneasy in his ribcage. He would show Linhardt he could be quiet, and Linhardt would come back. Muted, teeth notched together, he nodded and fidgeted with his sleeves instead of reaching out beseechingly.

Linhardt stood, although his half-lidded gaze lingered on Metodey's face before dipping back to the far side of the room, towards the door that concealed his office, his chemicals. More books. He could never tell what the saint was thinking, but...saints were always, always kind.

Linhardt stretched, lazily, and Metodey watched the way his newly-fastened collar traveled his pale neck. "I'm going to nap on the couch," he said, through a yawn, a clarification Metodey had already figured out but appreciated anyway; or the fluttering in his throat did, at least. Not hunger, for a change. Or...not a hunger for blood, or food, or water. 

"Sleep well," Metodey whispered. Without a further word, or so much as a nod in response, Linhardt left, and Metodey heard the heart-wrenching soft thud of the door closing behind him.

He wondered how well Linhardt could really sleep without him. He slept fitfully when Linhardt wasn't present. Just hearing the familiar shuffle of slippers or papers in Linhardt's office sometimes set him at ease when he was alone in this little room. 

Through the walls he could also hear when other people knocked on the saint's door or entered his office. These people interrupted his sleep, argued with him, interfered with his work, moved his books. Metodey had offered to silence them, but no, part of the test was being patient, patient and quiet, letting those others come and go as they pleased while he waited for Linhardt to return. And Linhardt would return, sooner or later, he would slip back inside and touch him and examine his claws and teeth and skin. Not as soft as the saint's skin, but so pleasant to have his silken touch brush Metodey's dry crimson scales, the color of the Emperor's sanguine sea—

—ah, when, specifically, had he begun to yearn for Linhardt's touch?

No, this question he knew the answer to. It was when he had been gouging himself and Linhardt sat and took his hands into his and told him to be still so he didn't cut himself. Then with clippers Linhardt carefully trimmed his claws. Metodey watched the tendons in the saint's wrists move as he worked, the blood so close to the surface that his skin was blue. He watched the bob of the saint's throat when he swallowed. It had been so difficult to stay still even with the warmth of the saint's lap and hands against his palms. In his head or out loud Metodey repeated that the Emperor needed him to wait, needed him to, that he could not take from a saint what the saint did not give, that it was a gift, the care was a gift, the care was the reward, it was a test, it was waiting, but it felt so good to think of the blood coating his tongue, between his teeth, dripping from his lips—it felt good—

He was so intent on watching Linhardt's serenity that he only realized he'd chewed his own lips bloody when he tasted the copper in his mouth. It wasn't enough, but the taste was soothing on its own. Linhardt tested the blunted claws on Metodey's own skin, and, satisfied, leaned back to clean the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief. Without emotion Linhardt told him he had done unusually well, sitting so still, and touched his face softly. The Emperor would be proud, Metodey thought, even as he leaned into the touch. It eased the hunger.

Not so long after that Linhardt returned again, and—though they had become so much closer since then, the memory still excited him. There was no one to bother with little noises now, so he allowed himself to squirm and dig his claws into the pillow he had pressed to his chest while he savored remembering. Linhardt had come back and opened his own wrist with a scalpel and offered it to Metodey through the bars of his cell. He had lapped at the saint's skin carefully, gently, with the veneration deserved of this cherished gift. How close, how close Linhardt was letting Metodey come to him, letting him drink of him, he wanted to be closer, to have his mouth on him like—like a— _leech_ —

No, no, no, Metodey wasn't, _Linhardt_ wasn't a leech, Linhardt was sweet, honeyed blood, honeyed benediction, the benediction of a saint. To even say his name was a benediction. To touch him was, it was, it was... _Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces._

But in giving Linhardt faltered and slumped and Metodey caught him, embraced him, leaned his head against the bars and listened to the blood in Linhardt's flesh, to the soft rhythm of his breathing. He rested his head against Linhardt's shoulders, folded his hands across Linhardt's chest, and let the slow rhythm and the velvet petals cloud his senses like perfume as Linhardt drifted into peaceful sleep. He hoped that Linhardt had been sated, that he was as pleased as the Emperor was when her subjects fed from her to demonstrate their devotion. The oddest feeling of sitting there with Linhardt so near him through the bars wasn't the soft green cloth against his skin, the scent of roses, the heat from Linhardt's body, the feeling of calm, but that simply having his arms around the other man's warm chest was as filling as his warm blood had been.

How strange, the saint's touch...


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By this time next week, it'll be two months since I started posting this! Sometimes it feels like the plot moves at a glacial pace, but I hope you're interested in seeing where it goes. This week is a reminder that Lysithea is in the character tags for a reason!
> 
> [Here is the art for this chapter](https://drive.google.com/file/d/15qm3Ask3MMbWuvvH-mDvhh-7a47K8tEk/view?usp=sharing)! The style feels like it's different, but I had a lot of fun with it.

Whenever Linhardt shut the trapdoor leading to the room below his office, the last things he’d see were Metodey’s beady eyes and furrowed eyebrows. It wasn’t practical to spend all his time down there, nor did he particularly _want_ to, but it was just as impractical for Metodey to spend all his time in the office. So Linhardt delivered a bowl of soup (not blood, another reason for the crestfallen look) and tried not to dwell on the queasy feeling in his stomach, or the way Metodey’s touch lingered when he handed Linhardt a journal as a parting gift. Were it not for his guest up above, he told himself, he would’ve stayed longer.

A guest Metodey didn’t need to know about, despite his prodding as to why Linhardt was leaving so soon.

Lysithea waited for him in his office, or at least she was supposed to—by the time he made it back up she was no longer on the couch.

“Lys—” Ah, Metodey could probably still hear him. “Hello?”

“In here,” said a muffled voice through his bedroom door.

The door stopped halfway when Linhardt tried to open it, blocked by something on the other side. He peeked his head in and frowned at a pile of clothes up against it. Those hadn’t been there the last time he was in here, had they? No, definitely not—it was an organized pile of dark colors.

Lysithea knelt on the floor, an industrious eye in the storm of his scattered clothing. Some had been sorted into piles but most remained a tangled mess of monochrome colors, accented with greens and golds.

She held up a wrinkled shirt. “Is this clean or dirty?”

“I don’t know,” Linhardt said, then grunted when he shoved the door open enough for him to squeeze through. “Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters. No wonder it stinks in here.”

Nothing smelled out of the ordinary to him. Lysithea had opened the window though, presumably to air the place out, and while he agreed it was stuffy that meant he’d have to close it that night or else he’d get cold, assuming he even slept in here rather than on his couch, and anyway the latch was stubborn and it was such a pain and—oh, nevermind.

“...Close the window when you’re done.” Linhardt rubbed the back of his neck. “Actually, please stop. I’ll do my own laundry.”

“No you won’t.”

“Regardless,” Linhardt said, “it’s not something you should—”

A balled up undershirt hit his face. He grabbed it and tossed it near the door.

She pointed to a different pile. “Put it with the other white ones.”

Though he muttered under his breath about it, he moved the shirt, then took a seat at the edge of his bed. It was the only place to sit aside from the floor or one of the clothing piles, he supposed, and this bed was his finest piece of furniture. Edelgard and Lysithea had both lectured him when they learned he spent a whole month’s salary on it, but neither of them knew how to enjoy themselves and he was certain they’d change their mind if they slept in it.

Well, the Emperor had no room to talk—she must have the most opulent bed in all of Fódlan, something fit to make the Goddess jealous. Or...maybe now she slept in a bathtub? On a stone slab? Either would suit her austere nature and be easier to scrub free of blood. It’d be pragmatic, too, since they could collect the runoff even while she slept— 

There was another bowl of soup, this one on his bedside table with broth that was an unappetizing yellow. Lysithea must have brought it in at some point. Linhardt hugged Metodey’s journal to his chest and sighed. 

“Sheesh, if you feel that bad about the laundry, come down here and help.”

“...It’s not that. Why’d you come today? I don’t recall anything scheduled.”

Lysithea paused, a different shirt in her hands. “He hasn’t tried to eat you or anything, has he?”

Linhardt rubbed his thumb across the spine of Metodey’s journal, then flipped it open. The first page he saw was all black smudges, the next a sprawl of words on crisp paper. He traced one claw over a fragment of what he assumed was poetry; whatever Metodey had spilled on it hadn’t been blood, but the words themselves were a distinctive rust-red.

_It sucked me first and now sucks thee and in this flea our two bloods mingled be_

"I’ve...been giving him some of my blood. After drinking my own portion, which, by the way”—he turned the page with perhaps more force than intended—”means you can stop with the lectures about food.” 

This next page was slathered in Crests—no, all variations on the interlocking V shapes of Cethleann, rendered in blood. He’d mentioned a few things here and there about Crests, yes, but couldn’t recall if he’d said anything about his own.

The bed sagged when Lysithea joined him on it. She craned her neck, loose hair tickling his shoulder where it escaped her caul, and peeked at the journal. He snapped it shut.

“Gross.” She scrunched up her face. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

“There’s nothing suspicious about the director drinking his share, and Metodey seems happy enough to get it from me.”

“Get how? If it’s with a syringe, you’ve got to be careful—”

“I know how to use a syringe.” None of those vile instruments were involved, but nothing good would come of giving her the details. His hand drifted to his shirt’s collar, buttoned up the full length of his neck, and tugged it a little higher.

“...Say, couldn’t you stuff someone full of her blood and send them somewhere else? I mean, getting it out would be an issue—a syringe, yes, but wouldn’t you need to separate the two types of blood? Or does that matter?” She pursed her lips. “You said he’s fine getting it from you, so indirect transmission seems possible...”

“Short-term, yes, but the digestion—” Linhardt paused. “I don’t see why it matters to you.”

“Is that what you and Hanneman are working on?”

“That’s confidential.”

“You’re the one who let me read the letter.”

Linhardt scooted away from her on the bed. “Have you considered that maybe I don’t want to spend my every waking hour thinking about blood? Just wondering.”

“...Sorry.”

It was too late now. His mind churned with questions she hadn’t asked, and his attempts to steer his thoughts away only anchored them to the topic.

The journal in his hands felt heavy. “Say that we find the perfect way to preserve it. You can send it anywhere in Fódlan and if someone won’t drink it, just, ugh, inject it. What then?”

“It’d be a disaster,” she said. “The Empire could do whatever they wanted, and no one could—”

“Ah, and that’s where you’re wrong.” He looked up. “That’s what everyone seems to think, that if you pump the stuff into the veins of any troublemakers, you have nothing to worry about. If they have a Crest, you get their loyalty, and if they don’t...” He thought of Caspar. But as he’d discovered with Metodey, even the Crested weren’t immune to larger alterations. “There’s still so much we don’t know. Edelgard could survive a thousand years or drop dead tomorrow. Saint Seiros seemed to think she’d live forever.”

“Be careful who you say that kind of thing around.”

“That’s part of the problem. No one wants to acknowledge the risks.” Hubert, perhaps, but he wasn’t going to share his thoughts on the Empire’s vulnerabilities anytime soon. “It’d be Seiros all over again, on the scale of an empire.”

Not long after she fell there’d been a string of deaths across Fódlan, all among the highest ranks of the church’s survivors, who had burst into withered imitations of the archbishop’s draconic form. For Linhardt it had been a scientific curiosity, for the Empire another reason why the monstrous church must be cleansed. Now it seemed an ill omen.

When Lysithea climbed off the bed, the light from the open window cast her shadow over him. “And you're going to make it worse.”

“As a government-funded research institute, we can’t refuse a direct request from the Emperor.”

“You could resign.”

“I’ve thought about it.” Linhardt set the journal aside, folded his hands over his chest, and looked away. “They’d hire someone else and the work would go on without me.”

She was quiet for a long time.

“Plenty of nobles knew what happened to House Ordelia, they sat on their hands while my family died. Then when the Empire invaded they acted like it was some big surprise.” Her shadow left him. “Selfish idiots.”

“If I lose my position, I lose access to valuable resources. Things you can’t study anywhere else.”

She balled her hands into fists. “You heartless—”

Linhardt sat up. “Lysithea, please. There’s so much more I can do if I stay.”

“Like what?”

His gaze drifted down to his own hands, which rested in his lap. Aside from the sharpened nails they weren’t that different from Lysithea’s. Certainly not like Metodey’s claws, whose joints had burst into cruel talons. But would his own continue to grow? How much more blood could he ingest before it eroded him the way rivers carved through mountains?

Sitting here, he felt stagnant, and so he got up to pace around the piles of laundry with one hand now curled around his chin. There was a breeze outside, refreshing against his skin, the kind of chill that helped him think.

“The transformations. The addiction.” He turned to the window. “I want to know if there’s a cure.”

“You really think that’s possible?”

Linhardt tapped his fingers on the window sill and looked outside, where industrious scholars went to and fro in the courtyard and halls visible from his office.

“I don’t know. We used to think it was impossible to implant a Crest, let alone remove them.”

It wasn’t enough to abstain from Her Majesty’s blood—look where that had gotten him, after all—and from what he’d learned of Metodey, going too long without exacerbated its effects. They only had a rudimentary understanding of her blood in the first place, anyway, though he had some ideas of where to start, but…He could barely feed himself or, as Lysithea was so keen to remind him, do his own laundry. Even if such things were trifling matters in the face of scientific inquiry, they were painful reminders of his own limitations.

“It’s not something I can investigate on my own,” he finally said.

Lysithea joined him at the window, leaning against his shoulder. “Then we’ll do it together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Metodey has an amazing talent for quoting public domain poetry. The bit in this chapter is from [John Donne's _The Flea_](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46467/the-flea), for anyone wondering


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is full of BLOOD and SCIENCE and a little bit of blood science! [You can see the art for it here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rnZPM5qzv1Kw0kkdYb6Mn1Bp46yH1r4s/view?usp=sharing), and as a heads up there's a couple references to past self-harm as well as some mild ideation about self-harm

One didn’t _need_ venin green to observe Her Majesty’s foul contagion under an essar scope. If her blood was mixed with someone else’s it was impossible to see the difference without staining the slide, but when viewed in isolation, as with everything that involved Edelgard, it defied all expectations. Her blood oozed around the glass in languid motions, aimless wandering like motes in dusty light. Not enough to travel far, but enough to unnerve Linhardt as he watched it through the scope’s eyepiece.

Why did it move? Was it alive? Did it have its own hunger, sustained by the blood of others? Hanneman had several theories about the miniscule animals that lived in the world revealed by his essar scopes, where gnats became winged beasts on the scale of dragons.

But Linhardt didn’t _want_ her blood to be alive. 

He leaned away from the scope and scratched his nose, then his cheek, then the inside of his wrists, where he knew her blood lurked just below the blue outlines of his veins. Part of him wanted to pierce his skin to get it out and far, far away from him. If only he could do so without exposing himself to any blood…

A wooden sound at his desk got him to look up. Metodey was perched on its edge like an obnoxious paperweight, drumming his claws. Linhardt frowned at how much he could knock over in this position if he felt so inclined.

“Please get down,” Linhardt said.

“Got a handkerchief I can borrow?” Metodey hopped off the desk and scratched his cheek in an idle motion, worrying at the red-flaked skin near his scales. An itch? Bad habit? Molting?

Linhardt sighed, pulled a cloth from his drawer, and handed it over. “And quit picking at yourself. You’re bleeding.”

In recent days he’d taken to letting Metodey sit in his office while he worked. Though he was reasonably confident no one had discovered his presence, it was still a risk to have him anywhere other than the former nap room—if only because of his tendency to poke and prod and play with sharp objects—but if they were just going to keep him locked up, then they may as well have left him in the isolation ward.

Sometimes the company was nice, Linhardt could admit, but more often than not he was a menace to progress. At least this way he could complain about his near fatal boredom and Linhardt could tell him what to do, rather than find him taking it out on his own body or, worse yet, Linhardt’s belongings. He’d already shredded several of the pillows in the nap room. Metodey’s room now, really.

Thin lines of blood streaked Metodey’s talons—his own, Linhardt hoped. Any other explanation meant trouble.

Linhardt tugged his sleeve over the lines of red welts along his own wrist. “Why is there blood on your hands?”

Metodey shrugged. “It happens.” He wiped his hands with the cloth and jerked his head toward the essar scope. “How long are you going to look at that thing? Come sit with me.”

“Later. I’m busy.” Linhardt returned to his scope despite a whine from Metodey; some strings of blood had crawled far enough to escape his view. Where did it want to go?

The more he watched the worse he felt, despite the wisp of satisfaction that lingered on his lips when he remembered Edelgard’s wrist against his mouth and how easy it was to suck down, as if the thing inside her _wanted_ to be consumed...Even under the glass, he swore he could still smell it. No, that must be the copper used in his scope, but no matter how much perfume he doused himself in or all the scented bundles of herbs he left around the office, blood cloyed his nostrils and stained his thoughts.

There was a harsh _clink_ nearby; he looked over to Metodey sorting through loose tools on his desk. Going for a scalpel by the looks of it. 

“Don’t touch that,” Linhardt said.

Metodey’s grin was far from sheepish. If all he wanted was to steal something, Linhardt was pretty sure he could do so without being caught.

“Why not?” Metodey danced the scalpel between his fingers. “If you won’t sit with me, I’ll have to entertain myself, won’t I?”

Linhardt held his hand out, palm upward. “There’s plenty of books to read. What about that one with all the poems?”

“The one with the mushy crap about that make-believe goddess and nature or whatever?”

...That suggested he’d at least read some of it. Linhardt hadn’t. He’d let Lysithea pick the title out, so either she didn’t know about Metodey’s interests or she didn’t care, but based on what _he_ knew of those, perhaps a university library wasn’t the best place to borrow from.

“Alright then, why not write something yourself?” Linhardt lowered his hand, though he still kept an eye on the scalpel. “Something you’d like to read.”

Metodey scoffed. “I don’t write poetry.”

“Really now? Then what do you call those snippets in your journals?”

“Things I remember.”

He had the scalpel’s point against the desk, about to gouge the wood when Linhardt reached over and grabbed his wrist. His eyes crinkled up at their edges from his smile, or perhaps it was a sneer—it annoyed Linhardt regardless of what he called it. 

There were several beakers lined up for today’s work that his mischievous guest eyed mere seconds after Linhardt pried the blade from his hand and tucked it away in a drawer. “Don’t touch those, either.”

“You should take a break soon. I bet I could make it worth your while.” Apparently done with the cloth, Metodey cleaned the last traces of blood from his claws with salacious licks.

A vial of Her Majesty’s blood, hidden away from Metodey in his robe’s sleeve, seeped into his thoughts at the sight, along with a memory of Metodey’s tongue lapping at his wrist, his neck, his body...What if he could turn that urge to be free of his own blood into something else? If this greedy man wanted her blessing—Metodey’s word, not his—so badly, then wouldn’t that be convenient for them both?

But he couldn’t even ruminate in peace. Metodey rocked one of the beakers back and forth, watching the liquid inside slosh around.

“And you really shouldn’t handle this stuff without gloves.” He touched his talons to Linhardt’s sleeve. “It’d eat right through that fabric, y’know.”

Linhardt jerked it away, frowning. “Says the man who plays with scalpels.”

“Sure, but that’s fun _because_ it’s dangerous. Nothing fun about melting your own skin off.”

Spurious logic. He silently noted Metodey was wrong and went back to his scope’s eyepiece. The blood hadn’t moved since he last checked, or if it had then not by much. If it truly were alive, did it need to be submerged like some bloodborne fish? Was it a parasite, unable to survive without a host?

No, that was silly—it wasn’t alive, he reminded himself. One could fling water on a hot pan and watch the sizzling drops bounce around, but that didn’t make the water some _entity_ with a mind of its own. It must have started to coagulate as any other blood would. He’d shoo Metodey away, then prepare a fresh sample.

There was a groan of sliding wood next to him. Metodey had his hand on the desk drawer, which was partially open, and he kept it there even after Linhardt pushed the drawer shut.

“What _are_ you peeping at, anyway? Must be something good.”

“...I’ve a commission from the Emperor herself.” Linhardt took his hand and held it; hopefully that would be enough to placate him. “Right now I’m...doing some exploratory work. You probably know a thing or two about cleaning bloodstains, don’t you?”

Metodey laced their fingers together. “Are you going to help with Her Majesty’s laundry?”

When Linhardt slipped out of his grip he didn’t bother with the drawer again, preferring instead to loom overhead and smirk.

“I’ve an interest in the decomposition of blood.” Hm. Unpleasant phrasing. “Eugh, not quite decomposition. Breaking it down. You could think of it like cleaning.”

Metodey tilted his head. “Airmid etch is a bit strong for that, don’t you think?”

“Airmid what now?”

He twisted around and grabbed the beaker from earlier, then shook it enough for small bubbles to fizzle upward. “Like I said, terrible for fabric. But if you mix it with some other things, that’ll help. Should still eat through the blood, too.” Right as Linhardt was about to admonish him for grabbing the acid, he set it down and hopped off the desk, then hunched over the assortment of beakers and bottles and vials and peered at the labels. “You got any oghma snow? That one’s like a powder.”

Spots bloomed in his vision when Linhardt stood, dizzy on unsteady legs until Metodey reached over to stabilize him, nearly spilling the acid in the process. A spike of anxiety shot through Linhardt until he took the beaker and set it back on his desk.

“I’ve a lot of powders. Pearl ash, maybe?”

“Is that what you call it? That sounds so pretty.”

 _Oghma snow_ was charming in its own way. It inspired Linhardt to hold up a bottle of venin green; Metodey’s nasty grin was distorted through the glass. “Say, what do you call this?”

Metodey took the bottle from him and turned it around in his hand. “Oh, that? Dragon spit.”

Disgusting, but educational. Linhardt handed him some other things to name and even if he’d forget this new jargon by tomorrow, it kept Metodey busy and would likely result in an opportunity to send him to his room without a fuss—then Linhardt could get back to work.

During their chat Metodey paced back and forth, around Linhardt’s desk, then one of the taller book stacks. Linhardt leaned against the edge of his desk with his arms tucked into his sleeves, rolling the hidden vial between his thumb and forefinger while he watched.

Eventually Metodey took a small assortment of chemicals and asked—politely, even—for an empty beaker and a glass rod to mix them.

A curious request. He didn’t think Metodey had any sincere interest in these things, that he was enjoying the sound of his own voice or perhaps Linhardt’s quiet responses.

The rod clinked against Metodey’s claws as Linhardt handed it to him. “What about gloves?”

Metodey shook his head, his fingers wrapped around a beaker’s stem. “I’ve handled far more dangerous things. I’ll be fine.”

He’d proven useful enough that Linhardt could overlook this for now. Perhaps it was a practical consideration—those claws of his would surely burst through any gloves. Instead he asked, “like what?”

“I used to make all sorts of poisons. Sometimes just one drop could fell a wyvern.”

“That’s impossible. Assuming something in liquid form, the ratio of blood to anything else would—”

“There’s a rat problem here, y’know. I’d be happy to demonstrate with some of those.” Metodey tipped a few drops of venin green into whatever he was mixing, which turned a violent orange.

“Please don’t.”

“Why not? They chew up your books and shit everywhere and taste _horrible_ and—”

Linhardt held up one hand to silence him, the other clenched around the vial in his sleeve. “I don’t want you killing anything around me, rats or otherwise.”

Metodey stirred faster. “Hm. Is that so?”

”Is there something I should know about?” 

Metodey shoved the mixture at him, an amber solution that was still warm. “Should dissolve any blood while leaving most fabric intact. Can’t imagine it’d be good on leather, but at least _this_ one won’t melt your bones.”

Whatever Metodey was up to, Linhardt decided it could wait a few minutes. The sample under the essar scope must be dry by now, so he’d need a fresh one. (Dead? No, it couldn’t die if it was never alive…) The cloth he’d given Metodey already had blood on it, which meant he’d have to use an embroidered handkerchief, one of his good ones, in his pocket. Oh well.

He slipped the vial from his sleeve, uncorked it—Metodey’s pupils dilated the moment he smelled it and Linhardt was certain his own did, too—then flipped it against the handkerchief until his fingertip was slightly damp.

...It was obscene, he knew, the way he took his index finger and kissed blood from the grooves of its tip. Of course Metodey watched.

“Is that—”

“Thank you.” Linhardt tossed him the vial. “You can have the rest.” He opened a different drawer at his desk and prepared a fresh slide. 

Swapping the slides in his scope took longer than he cared for—green spots were blooming in the fabric and the reaction could be over in seconds. Metodey asked him something drowned out by the rush of his own heartbeat as he peered through the eyepiece.

This fresh sample writhed under the glass, red and green mixing into a mottled brown the color of rot. Its death throes were faster than its other movements, like the final twitch of fingers...

Of course it was easy to destroy her blood. Killing was easier than it had any right to be, he’d discovered long ago, and even easier when it bore no human likeness. It made him sick.

They had to cleanse the blood without killing the host. If he were to drink this mixture he was certain it’d burn his veins and devour him from within. While it would perhaps be a bloodless end to Her Majesty’s foul influence, then he’d be dead and that might complicate some things.

A clawed grip on his shoulder dragged him from his thoughts and away from the eyepiece.

“Let me see.” Metodey was there, wide-eyed with blood smeared at the corner of his lip. “I—Sorry. The laundry was a joke. Nothing to waste her blessing over.”

Linhardt dispelled the glyph lighting his scope. “It’s not a waste at all. In fact, why not write down the recipe and I’ll pass it along to the cleaning staff?”

The vial, now empty, was in Metodey’s hand and lined with thin cracks. Another appeared when he squeezed it, until a knock at the door interrupted them and the glass crunched in his palm.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hanneman's experience of this plot is wild.
> 
> You can see [this week's art here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fNvttr8hvUADmGlnflCzMXaDOR2nv7gJ/view?usp=sharing), and I've also added another chapter to [Pharmakon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25108741/chapters/62370781)! It's wank week and today's prompt happens to be mutual masturbation, so it seemed a great time to post

The knocks at the office door grew louder, more insistent. “Linhardt?”

Hanneman. He must have heard Metodey, who stood across the desk from Linhardt, cradling his hand. Red beads swelled up from where the glass vial and his own claws had gouged his skin; the tendons of his wrist twitched when he pulled out a shard. Small as it was, the accusatory smear across it was brighter than anything else in the room.

“Are you alright?” Even muffled through wood, concern was evident in Hanneman’s voice.

Linhardt couldn’t see it without his scope, but the last bits of Edelgard’s blood in the vial must be seeping into Metodey through those cuts, where it’d mix with whatever was left of Linhardt’s blood in his veins...

The knocking stopped and left the silence of a held breath before a disaster, distracting enough for Linhardt to lift his gaze from Metodey’s hand to his face, which was oddly flushed.

“Are you ignoring me again?”

Linhardt grabbed his bleeding hand; magic pushed the slivers of glass out with a soft light that knit his skin together. “Hide,” Linhardt hissed, shooing Metodey away with a gesture, then stumbled around the book stacks to his door.

The doorknob jiggled. It was locked, of course, but the motion made his shoulders tense all the same. “Now I don’t expect _good_ manners from you, but is it truly such a bother to consider my feelings every now and then?”

_Yes_ , Linhardt wanted to answer, not out of spite but sheer exasperation. Well. Perhaps _some_ spite. First Metodey’s pestering, now this—at least Metodey had eventually contributed to his work.

“Director Hevring!” Hanneman’s shout startled Linhardt away from the door. “Please? It’s important.”

Linhardt rubbed his ear. If he was silent long enough then surely Hanneman would leave...And come back later, at an unknown time. Or ambush him in the hall the moment he ventured out—at least in his own office it was easier to end a conversation. He wouldn’t even let Hanneman in.

“...What kind of important?” Linhardt asked through the door.

“Oh good, you _are_ awake.”

“For now. What is it?”

The doorknob jiggled again. “Whatever is the matter? I believe I heard a shout.”

Linhardt rested his forehead against the door. “Just cut myself on a slide.”

Another jiggle. “Why is this locked?”

“Because I’m _trying_ to _work_ , Hanneman.”

“No need for that kind of tone. You really ought to try and be more available as the director, there’s several occasions where someone may need—”

Linhardt cracked the door open enough for a glare, since his tone wasn’t doing the trick. He was met with Hanneman’s furrowed eyebrows and a frown visible even under his mustache.

Hanneman looked down to the door handle and Linhardt followed his gaze, where he found his own hand smeared red from Metodey’s blood. “Are you alright?”

“I—yes. Already healed.” Linhardt slipped his hand back inside, debating whether or not to wipe it on his robe. Maybe he should have said he was bleeding profusely and needed to go take care of it.

The furrow in Hanneman’s brows deepened as he peered over Linhardt’s shoulder. “...Are you quite certain?”

Tension crept into Linhardt’s neck as he turned around, half-expecting to find Metodey. At first he didn’t realize what Hanneman was staring at, since there were all sorts of things he knew his colleague would judge him for, like the towers of books and paper and the dishes he kept forgetting to return to the kitchen or—

Ah, the dishes. Metodey had gathered them all up at some point and arranged them into a circle on his table, far enough from the desk that he’d missed it. A thoughtful gesture were it not for the dead rat displayed on a plate in the center as if it were an altar.

Linhardt pressed himself against the doorframe, straightening his posture to block more of Hanneman’s view. “Don’t you have something important to tell me?”

“Yes, but—what in Fódlan are you doing in there? I haven’t seen you for days.” It looked like there was a genuine sparkle of curiosity in Hanneman’s eyes as he adjusted his monocle, even if his face was still taut from a grimace. Linhardt couldn’t blame him for that; he was probably making a similar expression.

But could he tell him the truth?

Hanneman had betrayed the Empire once before, after all. No, it was only a betrayal in the bits of gossip that reached Linhardt’s ears despite his best efforts. Hanneman had _left_ the Empire once before but came back and had been a model citizen ever since. And he had bargained for his humanity, citing his lack of noble standing even though _Linhardt_ had abandoned his own title for that of director, but Hanneman was allowed to remain unchanged while Linhardt…

Hanneman’s grimace stung, as if he looked at a mess he’d almost stepped in. Like something _filthy_. Contaminated. Monstrous. A quick experiment, then: Linhardt opened the door wider and stepped into the hall, only for Hanneman to step back.

Linhardt retreated and leaned back against the doorframe.“I feel rather ill, actually. Seems like a good time for a nap.”

“You say that and then I won’t hear from you for the rest of the week.” Now back in the office, Linhardt went to shut the door only for Hanneman to wedge his loafer in the crack. “It worries me to see you in such a state.”

“Some rest should help.” Linhardt’s grip on the doorknob was white-knuckled. “And before you ask, I _am_ eating.”

“I can tell that much,” Hanneman said, trying to peek inside again. “But you hardly speak to me—to anyone—anymore. It’s not healthy.”

It took the kind of limp he’d go when someone tried to move him against his will, but Linhardt’s full weight was enough for Hanneman to slip his loafer from the door.

“Oooh! That was uncalled for!”

“Sorry,” Linhardt said, his cheek now pressed against the closed door. “Didn’t mean it. I’m so tired I can barely stand.”

“Fine then, go take your nap.” Sounds of shuffling from the other side. Perhaps Hanneman nursing a sore foot. “I’ll handle this myself. I just thought you might want to know before—oh, nevermind.”

Was that a ploy to get him to open up? It almost worked, but by the time Linhardt finished calculating the risks in his head and took hold of the doorknob again, Hanneman’s footsteps echoed down the hallway. Well, if it was truly important, then he’d hear about it later.

When he wrenched himself upright and away from the door, he found Metodey off to its side, flat against the wall with a scalpel clutched in his hand.

One hand pinching the bridge of his nose, Linhardt held the other one out for the scalpel. Metodey gave up with a smarmy grin and a surprising lack of resistance.

They both still had blood on their hands; Linhardt wiped his off on Metodey’s shirt, which was technically Linhardt’s, but he’d yet to lend something to the other man and want it back. The scalpel was an exception—Metodey kept stealing it, not borrowing—and Linhardt tucked it away in his desk drawer with a sigh. 

“What do you want with a scalpel, anyway? Please don’t tell me it’s for…” He glanced at the table. “Whatever you were doing.”

“But what are _you_ up to?” Metodey followed him to the desk, picked up the beaker with his cleaning solution from earlier. “The thing with Her Majesty and those chemicals—” 

Linhardt took that from him, too. “I asked you first.”

Metodey huffed. “The dishes attract the rats. Aren’t you sick of having those around?”

“While I agree they aren’t the best companions, that doesn’t mean I want to see them dead, or as…” As what, exactly? 

“A gift.” Metodey licked the hand he’d cut. “I even took care of the blood, just for you.”

The thought made Linhardt’s stomach roil. He leaned against the edge of his desk, trying not to dwell on the implications. Though he hadn’t examined the poor thing long enough to see how Metodey had killed it, that there was anything to “take care of” at all implied nothing good.

“I don’t want it. It’s absolutely disgusting is what it is, and furthermore—”

“Whatever.” Metodey scuffed the floor with his foot, something between a pout and a scowl on his face. “I told you, so now you tell _me_ what you’re up to.”

Linhardt went to the table and started stacking the bowls, making sure to put the ones with anything rancid left in them on the bottom so that he wouldn’t have to look at it. “I’m cleaning up.” He jerked his head toward the plate in the center. “You take care of that one.”

Still scowling, Metodey joined him at the table and grabbed the plate. A gift, he’d called it, clearly expecting some sort of gratitude in return. He knew Linhardt’s feelings about blood; it wasn’t hard to extrapolate those to violence or death or poor treatment of animals. But the way Hanneman had looked at him—was that his expression as he watched Metodey now?

Linhardt tried not to stare at the last smudges of blood that lingered on their hands. “...It was a thoughtful gesture,” he mumbled. “But don’t do it again.”

As fast as it’d appeared, Metodey’s scowl flipped back up into a smile.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been excited to post this one for awhile! Linhardt, Lysithea, and Metodey sit down for a nice lunch together...what could go wrong??
> 
> For the first time since I started posting, there's no art for this update! For now >__> I have something in mind but was pretty busy this week, so I'll just tuck the link in here when I get around to it

“Wow, you really cleaned the place up,” Lysithea said as she walked through the office. She weaved around fewer, shorter stacks of books and didn’t crunch a single paper underfoot as she made her way to the couch, where Metodey sat. He turned around and waved to her.

She cringed.

“All Metodey, really,” Linhardt said right behind her. “Thank him.”

Lysithea sat on his lounge chair rather than next to Metodey. A tea set was on the table between them, chipped but serviceable, and Linhardt poured all three of them a cup from the pot before he joined Metodey on the couch. Linhardt leaned forward enough to scoot a plate of sweet cakes closer to Lysithea, the topmost one wobbling on the stack until she took it.

“This is Lysithea,” he said to Metodey. “Do you remember her?”

Metodey stood and bowed. “As if I’d forget Her Majesty.”

Linhardt sighed into his teacup, fluttering the liquid. After that and Lysithea’s stone cold silence, he sat back down.

“I know you’re not the Emperor—not exactly.” His eyes darted between her and the cake she dunked into her tea. “Different smell, different taste—”

“Ah, taste. How are those cakes, Lysithea?”

Lysithea swallowed her mouthful. “You said he was better.”

Linhardt looked to Metodey, who clacked his claws together and stared into his own teacup. Of course she wouldn’t notice how he recognized his own error before either of them commented, how few scabs dotted his skin, how he sipped at his tea without lamenting the lack of blood. When he looked up their eyes met and he bumped his knee against Linhardt’s.

“Don’t you think so?” Linhardt gave his knee a pat. “Relatively speaking.”

Though Lysithea’s mouth was hidden behind her cup, he knew she was frowning.

Maybe this had been a bad idea. He wasn’t so optimistic as to think Metodey and Lysithea would get along, but all the fawning over Linhardt was exhausting, quite frankly, and while Metodey’s physical condition had improved, whatever social muscles he had were atrophying. As Metodey speared a cake on one finger, Linhardt revised that thought. He wasn’t sure this man had any social skills to begin with. Certainly not ones from polite society.

The waste of a sweet deepened her frown. “If I’m not the Emperor, then who am I?”

Metodey spoke without looking up from the mush of crumbs and cream on his plate. “Your name is Lysithea and you’re a professor at Enbarr University.” His tone was a flat mimicry of Linhardt’s drawl save for the next part, which he muttered. “Seems a bit below your station.”

“You were in the imperial guard, weren’t you?” Lysithea asked.

The question creased Metodey’s brow. “I am, yes.”

“How did someone like you end up in that position?”

“You—Her Majesty—recognized my brilliance.”

Lysithea paused with her hand on another cake. “Brilliance at _what_?”

“The war, don’t you remember?” Metodey jiggled his leg. “Not the—not the tomb incident, that really wasn’t my fault, but the feast and those snakes in the ground, I dug them up for you, spilled their blood for you”—his tongue flicked out and swiped across his lower lip—”or do you think I’ve forgotten? I haven’t, Your Majesty. You lifted me from that hole so that I could stand by your side. You’ll take me back once I’m better, won’t you?”

Linhardt took one of Metodey’s hands and squeezed it. This wasn’t enough to calm him, though he laced their fingers together, and so Linhardt used his other hand to rub small circles between his shoulder blades.

Once Metodey seemed a bit less frazzled, Linhardt dragged his plate closer. “Are you done with this?”

A _clink_ rang out when Lysithea set her teacup down. She stood. “Excuse me, Metodey, but I need to speak with Linhardt for a moment.” Her voice sharpened. “Privately.”

Oh he was in for it now, wasn’t he? Linhardt sighed as he stood up, stretched, then leaned over to pat Metodey’s shoulder one last time. “Help yourself to more cake.”

Lysithea grabbed his sleeve and tugged him towards his bedroom door. She looked over her shoulder. “Save one for me.”

◆◆◆

Once they were in his bedroom, Lysithea rounded on him. “You made him clean your office?”

Linhardt gestured for her to lower her voice. “I didn’t _make_ him clean anything.” He paused. “Well, there was this one mess, and then he got a bit carried away—said he needed somewhere to exercise—”

His explanation ended in a squawk when Lysithea reached up and yanked his shirt collar down. Though the buttons remained intact, it exposed dark circles of varying shades along his neck.

“I knew it!” She released him, then wiped her hand on her dress as if the hickeys were contagious. “Unbelievable. He’s your patient, first of all—”

“Not _really_. His circumstances are rather unique.”

“Hmph. What makes you think it’s good to get so, so—” A pink flush dusted across Lysithea’s cheeks. “Familiar?”

“We aren’t…” A wince pulled Linhardt’s face taut. “Romantically involved or anything.”

Her scowl turned to the office door. “I don’t think he knows that.”

A curious sensation spread from one of the hickeys when Linhardt prodded it. There was no denying that Metodey could be oddly affectionate, but Lysithea didn’t understand the nature of it, and while Linhardt wasn’t sure he did either, he suspected it had more to do with the exchange of blood than anything else. The way Metodey looked at him was no different than how he ogled a vial of Her Majesty.

No, there was perhaps a bit more to it.

The ploys for attention, the wheedling whenever Linhardt wanted time to himself, the greedy way he drank up even a brief acknowledgement...Despite Linhardt’s efforts, Metodey was chronically bored. Anyone would be in his position. It made sense to latch onto whatever sources of stimulation he could get, which wasn’t the same as what Lysithea implied.

“You shouldn’t need me to tell you it’s a bad idea, but here we are.” She started pacing around his room. “I looked into some things about him.”

“Did anyone notice? That could be trouble.”

He heard her scoff behind him. “Of course not. I’m not some amateur.”

“Really?” Linhardt turned around. “Since when have you studied espionage—”

“Anyway, before he was a guard he was a soldier.” She weaved her way around the piles of laundry on the floor while she spoke. “Started out as a mercenary and worked his way up the ranks, somehow. No one had anything good to say about him.”

“So? That means he’s been honest with us.”

None of it was new information except for that last bit, which he already suspected. Metodey wasn’t without his virtues—the attentiveness was nice in moderation, really, and he could be surprisingly thoughtful—but they were easy to overlook.

“How much does he know?”

Linhardt adjusted his shirt’s collar. “About what?”

“Apparently he thinks he can waltz back into the palace once we let him go. Has he even seen the wanted poster?”

“...It hasn’t really come up.”

“Because you’ve been too busy”—her blush had returned—“being irresponsible?”

Let her think whatever she wanted about it. Irresponsible was hardly the worst thing he’d been called. “We may not know what, exactly, Metodey was like previously, but it’s important to recognize that he _is_ getting better.”

Lysithea was in front of him now, staring at the floor with her arms held around herself. “Some things you don’t _get better_ from.” She straightened her posture. “What if he’s like that, huh? You can’t hide him forever.”

When she stepped forward he backed away, nearly tripping over a bundle of his own clothes. “There’s still room for improvement, even if...even if some changes are irreversible.” He bumped up against his bedside table. “We can talk to him, maybe come up with some options once he’s less delusional.”

“We can talk to him _now_.”

“The future is a rather intimidating topic, don’t you think? Best to approach with clarity.”

Lysithea backed off and he felt his jaw unclench—he couldn’t tell when he’d done so in the first place—though the tension returned when she opened her mouth again. “He’s apparently doing well enough for you to fraternize with him, so he’d better be well enough to make his own decisions.”

And what, exactly, did she think he was doing with Metodey? Nothing she wanted to hear about, so why all the fuss? While he turned over the ethics of the situation in his thoughts, Lysithea stalked back to the other side of the room. Linhardt stumbled over a different pile of clothes as he followed her, only managing to catch the edge of her sleeve after she’d opened his door, and ran into her back when she stopped in the doorframe.

Linhardt saw Metodey over her head, his face obscured by a ball of cake he was hunched over. Quite a large ball, too, lumpy and with white cream that oozed from various punctures. A thin strand of Metodey’s hair drifted onto it when he looked up.

“I saved you one,” he said, gesturing to the ball.

◆◆◆

Lysithea left with a curt parting for Linhardt and nothing but contempt for Metodey. Whatever twinges of sympathy for him she’d felt earlier had apparently been snuffed out by his wanton destruction of cake, or maybe she wasn’t feeling well, or maybe it was due to something else entirely. Linhardt was already penning an apologetic letter in his mind while he surveyed their disaster of a luncheon.

A red smudge lingered at the rim of Lysithea’s teacup. Lipstick, he hoped. A quick sniff or, regrettably, a lick would tell him.

Metodey took the plate with her cup. “I thought she liked cake.”

“She does.” Linhardt noted how vivid the red was against the porcelain. A venous color.

“Then what was it? I failed, didn’t I?”

“Failed what?”

“The test.” Metodey clinked his claws against the plate.

“No, you were fine, there’s no test.” Linhardt took the plate from him and set it back on the table. “Not exactly.”

Metodey grabbed a different plate, and Linhardt relieved him of that one as well, then told him to sit on the couch. There was a sink in the bedroom that Linhardt went and poured the tea into, where it watered into a light brown as it circled the drain.

It wasn’t a test, but an assessment. Despite Linhardt’s patient explanations, the threads Metodey saw between Lysithea and Edelgard had only frayed at their edges. He wasn’t starved of the Emperor’s blood anymore—far from it—and while too much could scramble one’s thoughts just as too little could, if that was the case then Linhardt was sure he’d have experienced it first. His body was the intermediary, after all, but perhaps that influenced the whole process in ways neither of them understood. Edelgard’s blood was addictive; did its contamination give his blood a similar effect? Now that’d be difficult to test—his only subject was already biased, but—

Linhardt shut the faucet off. What a disgusting line of thought. With their limited access to Her Majesty, it was convenient for him to take what he could stomach and then share it with Metodey. Lysithea made him sound like a pervert for it, but he had to get it out _somehow_ and it was a nasty affair no matter how he went about it, so when given the choice between some cruel instrument against his skin or warm lips, well...and what did it matter if he was a pervert, anyway?

Theoretical perversion aside, the exchange of blood was a compelling explanation for Metodey’s clingy behavior. If he wanted to deal with less of that, then he shouldn’t encourage it. Simple.

When he returned Metodey was still on the couch, sitting on his hands while his leg bounced.

“If anyone messed up, it was me.” Linhardt touched one of the bruises under his collar. “Lysithea thinks I shouldn’t be, ah, feeding you as I have. I’m inclined to agree.”

Metodey’s hand had made it to his mouth, where he gnawed on one knuckle. “She has her reasons. Her wisdom. Her mercy. Who am I to question that?”

He looked over in search of a response, but Linhardt resumed tidying up without one. As the silence stretched on one knuckle became two, until he chewed on his leathery palm enough to indent his skin.

“She is wise, yes.” Linhardt stacked one last cup inside another before gingerly lifting Metodey’s hand from his mouth. It was heavy in his own leaden hand. His whole body did, every movement a slog as if against a river’s current or trudging through a mire. Sleep was the most sensible course of action—the only one he felt up to, really—but would that help Metodey? Hard to say. That man’s only comforts in life seemed to be blood, sex (Linhardt shuddered at how easily he combined them), and whatever other base pleasures he’d enjoyed before coming to the Institute. 

“I’m going to nap,” Linhardt said, drawing the opening glyph on the table once he’d cleared it off. It floated up enough for him to crouch and peel back the rug, revealing the trapdoor. “In my bedroom.”

Metodey remained where he was, scratching the back of his head and shedding more loose hairs on the couch. It was tempting to extend an offer to stay, but then Linhardt remembered the incident with Hanneman and opened the trapdoor. He got up, his body still heavy, and stood by Metodey.

There was one source of comfort he’d overlooked—he cupped Metodey’s cheek in his hand. “I’ll come see you after I wake up.”

Such a simple action, one that Metodey learned into with his eyes fluttering shut when Linhardt rubbed his scales. Linhardt wanted to study the reaction, to see if it applied to the shell of his ear or perhaps along his jaw or the scales on his neck, but instead stepped back. That sort of indulgence was exactly what he needed to cut down on.

Once he’d climbed down the ladder, Metodey looked up with those beady yellow eyes of his and waved goodbye.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someday Linhardt will catch a break, but not in this chapter. Here's [the art](https://drive.google.com/file/d/13GWwGgjDBcHqg3NDzB2t-RvUbxB3PkEX/view?usp=sharing) for this week!

It was harder than Linhardt expected to reintroduce some distance between him and Metodey. Simple, in a practical sense—once it was clear Linhardt didn’t approve of any violence towards the office rats he’d yet to make any other grisly discoveries (if Metodey disposed of them he did so discreetly, which was only polite), and when Linhardt wanted time to himself they’d made some compromises about who got to sit where and the protocols for any handling of sharp objects.

Metodey was still bored, of course, but Linhardt suspected he’d been bored ever since the end of the war. Bit by bit the office had cleared until he had the space for acrobatics that exhausted Linhardt to watch. Metodey always wanted him to watch.

No, what made it difficult was how, after the bruises along his neck faded, he found himself craving more. If that was all he wanted, fine, but it was paired with unfortunately pleasant thoughts of Metodey’s fangs buried in his skin, and he wanted to nip whatever fetish _that_ was in the bud. On nights where he couldn’t sleep he was back to his old habits of reading in bed until his eyes burned, or pacing about the office lost in a maze of his own thoughts, or on one unsatisfying occasion, trying to provide the sort of relief he knew Metodey could only to end up bored and listless.

A surprising thing to miss, crude as it was.

Right now Metodey sat cross-legged in front of a bookshelf, surrounded by haphazard piles of books while Linhardt watched him from the lounge chair.

“ _Book of Nature_ , looks like volume three.” Metodey said.

“No, not that one.”

Despite the ample space on the shelf in front of him, Metodey got up and placed the book on an entirely different bookcase, then sat back down. Linhardt skimmed his memory for the last book he’d seen going to that particular shelf, but it was an unrelated tome. In fact, he was pretty sure volumes one and two were on different shelves. Metodey read a few more titles—none of them were the book Linhardt was looking for—and placed each one in a different spot.

Though it was mildly interesting to study Metodey’s chaotic organization, Linhardt’s eyelids were heavy. “It’s _Metallurgy for Alchemists_. Wake me up when you find it,” he said, letting his eyes droop shut.

He’d never asked Metodey to sort things, anyway. All he’d asked for was a bit of help finding a book he suspected would have some useful information on wootz steel and Metodey, overzealous as ever, had taken it upon himself to gather up every loose book in his office.

Right as he started to drift into sleep, Metodey’s voice dragged him back. “What about _The Miracles of Saint Cethleann_?”

Linhardt stared at cracks in the ceiling to clear away the memory that dredged up. “Put that one where I won’t find it.”

“Why?”

Maybe he ought to give Metodey permission to destroy it. The thought lodged in his heart and made it ache—that would be yet another smudge from the annals of history.

“Because I don’t want to read it.” He looked to Metodey, who was flipping through the pages. “You’re more than welcome to, provided you don’t ruin it.”

Metodey snapped the book shut. “Sounds boring.”

He set it aside and reached for a different one, but his claws raked across the leather cover as a shriek pierced the air and then he leapt to the side and spilled an entire pile of books. A bright flash outside the window accompanied the sound, as did another high-pitched whistle and a white flare that made the lanterns in his office look like matchsticks.

Linhardt nearly rolled off the couch, the unpleasant emotion in his heart knocked loose by the shock. He sat up with his lips pursed—whatever this was, it meant trouble, didn’t it?

Metodey crept towards the window and looked out, despite Linhardt mumbling at him to get away from there. He whirled around, eyes bright, and tapped the glass. “Fireworks!”

The couch groaned when Linhardt lumbered off of it. Another flash lit up the office as he joined Metodey at the window, and sure enough, once the afterimage cleared from his eyes he saw a distorted rain of golden sparks through the glass. Beyond them were faint lights in the sunset that gilded the angular silhouette of a carriage in the sky and the dark beating wings of the pegasi tethered to it. One last pop of dazzling glitter accompanied them as they descended towards the Institute’s courtyard, the flare of light illuminating onlookers and making Linhardt squint.

By the time they landed, the carriage jolting despite the pegasi’s grace in the sky, the sun had dipped below the horizon. Only one person would arrive in such an ostentatious manner.

No, his mind supplied other names, but Ferdinand would make his entrance under the sun’s glorious rays, while someone like Lorenz would have announced the grand event with a letter or a messenger covered in Gloucester roses.

It was hard to see through the window, but his office lanterns would light his silhouette enough for anyone in the courtyard who looked up. They’d see Metodey, too, with his face pressed against the glass.

Linhardt touched his shoulder. “Quit gawking. Someone might notice.”

Metodey crouched until he peeked outside with only the top of his head visible.

Linhardt indulged him for now, stepped over the spilled books until he reached his table, where he scratched out the opening glyph. Metodey looked over his shoulder once he heard it rise, but remained at the window even after Linhardt gestured to the trapdoor.

“I’m going to watch,” Metodey said. “No one’ll see. What if it’s dangerous down there?”

Linhardt pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s not, and even if it was there’s nothing you could do from here.”

“But I’m not done with the books.”

They stared at each other until Metodey crawled away from the window and back towards the spilled pile, which he started to stack. It kept his hands busy; without such a distraction he’d fret and fidget and worry under the office. A useful distraction, too, though Linhardt wasn’t sure he’d be able to find anything after Metodey was done with the shelves, which wasn’t all that different from the current state of affairs, but at least there’d be fewer things to trip on.

“... _Metallurgy for Alchemists_ , remember.” Linhardt kicked the rug back over and lowered the table. “If you find it, leave it on my desk, alright? And if anyone comes near the office, hide. Even if it’s me.”

Metodey nodded.

“And you’ll stay away from the window, won’t you?”

Another nod.

“You really mean it?”

“Of course,” Metodey said, placing another book on the shelf.

Linhardt grabbed an outer robe that hung from a hook near his door. He glanced at Metodey, who waved at him one last time, then shrugged into his robe and left the office.

◆◆◆

Night had settled in by the time he made it to the courtyard, where he shoved several people aside before making it to the carriage. The elevator had been held up, he suspected, by those eager to see what all the fuss was about, and he’d refused to take the stairs.

Constance von Nuvelle stood in the center of the courtyard, basking in the glow of the moonlight and all the attention, her edges backlit by gold from the lanterns attached to her carriage. He’d heard her tittering laugh all the way from the hall, and she let out another one as she spoke to Hanneman. He was the first to notice Linhardt, though Constance was the first to address him.

“Oh-ho! Look who finally decided to join us!”

One of her mounts pawed at the grass, with sable fur and eyes that flashed white in the darkness. He frowned when it whinnied at him—this was a courtyard, not a stable, and certainly not meant for any landings.

“Why are there horses in my courtyard?” Linhardt asked.

Constance snapped her feather-tipped fan shut. “Such nerve! These pegasi boast the finest pedigree in all of Fodlan. They are not mere _horses_.” 

“Ah, sorry,” he said. “Nice to see you Constance, why are your pegasi in my courtyard?”

Hanneman moved between them. “My apologies for the director’s lack of manners.”

It didn’t stop her from stepping around him and jabbing her fan into Linhardt’s chest. “I gave plenty of notice for you to arrange a proper reception. Is this how the director of the Hevring Institute treats all his guests?”

He looked over her shoulder at his colleague. “...This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

When they made eye contact Hanneman popped his monocle off to clean it.

Constance used her fan to hold him at knifepoint. Fanpoint, really, but that was semantics. “Do you not read your own letters? Or speak to your staff?” She brushed aside some of his loose hair. “Or do anything about that chronic bed head of yours?”

“Chronic?” Linhardt ran his own fingers through his hair. They came away greasy; he wiped his hand on his robe. “You’ve caught me at a bad time, that’s all.”

“So it would seem.”

Hanneman cleared his throat. “Miss Constance, shall I carry your luggage?”

The fan tickling Linhardt’s skin retreated as she whirled around, her smile back in full force. “Oh! There’s no need to strain yourself.”

She went to the carriage with its open door, leaned inside, and tapped something Linhardt couldn’t see with her fan that lit up her face with a blue flash of light. When she started to walk away, a caravan of wooden trunks led by a carpet bag floated along behind her. That was all well and good but—

“What about the pegasi?”

Constance regarded him with a frown. “Arrangements have already been made.”

“What sort of arrangements? You can’t just leave them—”

She strolled past him. Though he turned to Hanneman for support, all he did was polish his monocle until Linhardt approached.

A headache was already settling into his skull. “Did you know she was coming?”

“It seemed better for me to handle the preparations. You’ve been…unwell. But I’ll have you know I _did_ try to tell you.”

He made no effort to bite back the bitterness in his tone. “You could’ve tried a little harder.”

The glow from the luggage lit up Hanneman’s face as Constance returned. “Will _someone_ escort me to my quarters like a _gentleman_?”

Since she apparently had everything figured out Linhardt figured she could find her own way, but Hanneman was quick to follow her into what remained of the onlookers, who parted for Constance though a few ducked under her luggage, which knocked a hat off one of the slower scribes. That left Linhardt with the stragglers, the feathered horses, and the full bloom of his headache.

One of the pegasi reached over and nibbled at his hair until he shoved its snout away; the hair blew back into his face when it snorted at him, its eyes still bright in the darkness.

When he looked up at his office, a similar gleam lurked in the window.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this timeline, both Constance and Metodey have spent time living in a sewer. I really wanted to point this out but it got lost in the editing...i think about this every now and then though, so I'm saying it here
> 
> Anyways, [here is the art for this chapter](https://drive.google.com/file/d/14kLk4LERUgKvkuzfUKKBXDwrCjZ1bZA_/view?usp=sharing)! I drew that metodey with my left hand

On the way back to his office, Linhardt took the stairs again. How was it that he could be at the cutting edge of Adrestia’s technology, yet kept having to take the stairs? Though he’d felt much stronger as of late his stamina hadn’t changed all that much, which left him bent over and winded in one of the stairwells. He sat down.

Metodey must be anxious for his return. Linhardn’t wasn’t. Either he’d have to acknowledge the blatant disregard of simple instructions, or pretend he hadn’t seen and risk Metodey doing something even more brazen in the future, which he might do anyway if he thought Linhardt wouldn’t notice.

It exhausted him, paying enough attention to notice such things. If he didn’t, Hanneman—or worse, Constance—would.

Linhardt leaned against the wall, his arms crossed in his sleeves. She had to be kept away from his office. When he was hungry enough or in certain moods, his senses honed in on the presence of blood, the way it thrummed through veins and made heartbeats pound in his ears like a headache if he got too close. Constance would suffer from the same affliction, though perhaps in her case _suffer_ wasn’t the right word.

Nothing convincing came to mind when he thought of explanations for why there was a racing heart under his floorboards. “An exceptionally large rat” wouldn’t fool her. He could be feeling ill whenever she wanted to see him. That wasn’t far from the truth and had worked on Hanneman until recently, after all.

No, if he tried that then she’d come barging in with an armful of spells and tonics and experimental treatments he never asked for.

A preemptive strike, then. She’d have no reason to pester him in his office if he went to see her first. Though Hanneman had neglected to tell him where she’d be staying, it wasn’t hard to puzzle out—he wasn’t _that_ ignorant of his own facility. The Institute’s guests stayed in the same dorms as most of the other staff. That was only logical, since any guests at a research institute were likely there to conduct research.

So what, exactly, did Constance have planned?

Though it was easy to locate her room—Miss Nuvelle made sure everyone knew of her presence wherever she went—when he knocked on the door there was no response.

“Constance?” How surreal to be on the other side of a door like this. “Please be in there. I don’t have the energy for hide-and-seek.”

Silence.

“You’re not, are you?”

The door was unlocked, he discovered as he turned the knob. It would’ve been polite to leave and come back later, but instead Linhardt went in and flopped on the bed. All the luggage strewn about suggested that not only was this the room she’d be staying in, it wouldn’t be a short visit. 

Why couldn’t she stay with, oh, anyone else? Maybe Ferdinand? They’d have a grand time together and Ferdinand seemed like he could use some chipper company, anyway. If she had business with the Institute then she could take a carriage.

He opened his eyes to a vision of Constance looming over him with a furrow in her brow.

He closed them again and mumbled, “Why aren’t you with Ferdinand?”

“Excuse me?”

Ah, it wasn’t a vision or a dream—he hadn’t noticed himself doze off—but the woman herself, now with a dark expression.

Linhardt sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Sorry about that. Was just trying to say hello.”

“By sneaking into my room like some cat burglar?”

It wasn’t her room, he wanted to correct her. “Sleep walked up while I was waiting for you and knocked me right out. I didn’t stand a chance.”

Her scowl disappeared with an undignified snort; she cleared her throat and refined it into her usual laugh. “How unfortunate. You ought to let me brew you coffee sometime—I’m sure it’d even the odds.”

There was no doubting that—she’d tried it on Hubert. Once. Nearly a week of trembling hands and jumping at shadows had soured his relationship with the beverage for quite some time.

“I’ll pass,” Linhardt said.

“Hm, then perhaps some tea? Something energizing—ah, I’m sure if I graced us with Her Majesty’s presence—”

“ _No_.” He must have said it a bit too forcefully, as she blinked at him. “No, not that—I’d rather have the coffee.” 

Constance pursed her lips, then went and opened one of her trunks. “You really _are_ sick, aren’t you?”

“...Everyone knows how much I love blood.”

“It’s not that.” The open trunk hid her expression, but her voice was laced with a curious hint of something he couldn’t identify. “Pallid far beyond the demands of fashion, so very disheveled, and Hanneman—Ah, nevermind.”

Was she disgusted by him, too? Quite hypocritical of her if so—they were both contaminated by Edelgard’s blood—unless she meant his office, which was much cleaner since Hanneman’s last visit—not that she’d see—or some petty gossip she’d heard before she so much as unpacked— 

“No, no, enlighten me.” He folded his hands in his lap. “What did Hanneman have to say about my condition?”

“Whatever ails you, I’m certain there’s a cure.” She emerged from her trunk with a dress. “Though...perhaps some caution would not be remiss. You’d make such an easy target.”

“For what?”

She kept her back to him while she hung the dress in the room’s wardrobe, but her hunched shoulders conveyed enough. “Haven’t you heard? Nobles such as you and I, drained and left as but a husk”—she turned around—”I shudder to think of it!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Linhardt was careful to keep his tone flat and even, though it might’ve been better to fake some surprise.

Rather than continue unpacking, she went to a nearby desk, sorted through a scattering of loose papers, and unfolded a bulletin with Metodey’s face.

“Hanneman gave me this.” She passed it to him with a dainty touch, pinching only the corner as if it were soiled. “I heard he was lurking around the Institute some time ago.”

It was an awkward rendition that emphasized the off-color stripe in his hair that he insisted on keeping. He even styled it the same way now that it was growing out, though it was probably a lost cause, what with the black sclera and scaled cheeks.

Glasses? Makeup? It’d take more skill than Linhardt had to do a convincing job...

“...When?”

“Hmm, a month or so? What a vile man.”

Linhardt folded the paper and rubbed his thumb along the crease. “You talk like you know him.”

“Do you not recall? _Please_ tell me you remember when we met.”

“Which part?”

Constance gasped and held a hand to her chest. “Our time in Abyss? And when he kidnapped poor Aelfric—” Her hand clenched into a fist. “Oh, that whole affair was a rotten one!”

Between the fabled treasure and the treasure trove of forbidden books and the golems trying to kill them for touching all that treasure, and all that blood...There was an awful lot to sift through before he arrived at a now familiar grin. Of course Constance would remember every speck of detail, even if she weren’t personally invested—she had an excellent memory for those who helped or hindered her in life, and would mete out the appropriate rewards when the time came. Linhardt much preferred to only tuck what interested him into his memory; time could wash away the rest.

Certain things remained carved into his thoughts no matter how much time passed.

One of them was a beast, once a man, threaded with pulsing veins that split open as they killed him. The way Constance in particular spoke of him, he seemed large-hearted in a less literal sense before things took a turn for the worse, but all Linhardt knew was claws and fangs and a desperate obsession with someone he claimed to love.

Linhardt was certain he’d never understand that.

“...Yeah,” he said. “A lot happened.”

Constance was back at her trunk, pulling out another dress. She paused and picked something off its neckline. “Surely you know Duke Gerth?”

Another name he reached deep into his memory for, though he didn’t emerge with anything more than his position as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. “Not personally.”

She sighed down at the dress, which was a funerary black. “We’d finally patched things up. For House Nuvelle to rise from its ashes only for House Gerth to fall—oh, what a tragedy.” She sounded upset enough about it that Linhardt murmured his condolences. It was an odd turn in the conversation until she added, “I hope they catch him soon.”

“The—the duke?”

“Are your ears full of wax? This is recent news!”

...It had been a rather absurd question. He couldn’t run very far if he was dead. Then she must have meant Metodey, which was just as absurd, because he’d been in the office for as long as she probably meant by _recent_ , and Linhardt doubted that Metodey had snuck out for any assassinations.

He must have been giving Constance a vapid look, for she rolled her eyes and went over to the bed, where she waved at him until he scooted over so that she could smooth out her dress. “Enough of such unpleasant business. Be a dear and help me unpack, would you?”

Linhardt rubbed the back of his neck. “Ah, sorry, I don’t think I have the energy.”

“I’ll unpack and you can listen, then. Hanneman filled me in on your current progress—lack of, really.” She smiled at him. “Things should turn around now that I’m here.”

“I should go, actually. Wouldn’t want to pass out in your bed again—”

He stood up only for Constance to step between him and the door, still smiling. “If you won’t drink my coffee,” she said with a huff, “a touch of ice should keep you awake. We can’t shirk our duties, after all.”

“I’m sure Hanneman was thorough enough that I’ve nothing to add.”

She blocked his attempt to go around her. “Since when was Hanneman promoted to director?”

“He handles blood better than me, that’s all.” This time he pushed her aside.

“Linhardt.” The severity of her tone got him to pause with his hand on the doorknob. “We live in a different society these days. Your title is derived from merit, not birth, and you’ve got to _earn_ the privileges that come with it…” His grip on the doorknob tightened at her next laugh. “Otherwise you might lose them! Just something to think about.”

“...I’ll keep it in mind,” he said.

Her frigid stare sent a shiver up his spine as he fled from her room.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some self-injury in this chapter (ah, the demands of blood science...and anxiety) along with implied suicidal ideation. You can see the [chapter art here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nzoaRSn2mhphl6qGec8DH8Z0YhrmxWPw/view?usp=sharing), and also [pneumatic tubes are cool](https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/tube-room-1947-martin-konopacki.jpg)!!!

One of the Institute’s modern conveniences was a system of tubes that threaded through the walls like veins, pumping little capsules into a central room that was the heart of their day-to-day communications. It made couriers obsolete—there was even talk of expanding the system to other parts of Enbarr, or at least the Imperial palace—but there was one flaw that many of the Institute’s staff, Linhardt included, had yet to overcome.

It was easy to ignore messages in a tube. 

Sure, the capsules would back up his office’s receiving cylinder if he ignored them, but that only made it harder for people to send him anything. The _thunk_ whenever a new one arrived could be annoying, yes, but it was brief and easier to deal with than live messengers, whose presence often necessitated a response.

Linhardt had found it a wonderful system at first. All the paperwork and reports that required his attention could be addressed from the comforts of his lounge chair; it turned out that anyone who wanted his input could pester him with the same ease. Eventually he found that if he let the capsules pile up then he only heard about things important enough to merit an in-person visit, and even those tapered off once...whatever this was had started. Not Metodey—whatever had compelled him to waste away on his couch between Lysithea’s visits, listening to the blood in his own veins, trying to make sense of how he’d ended up there.

For a while no one had sent him anything. All his staff knew he wouldn’t respond and Linhardt had locked the panel to his receiving cylinder so that Metodey wouldn’t mess with it.

Constance von Nuvelle was not like his staff. The first time she realized he’d ignored her message, she marched to his office and demanded an explanation—he was lucky Metodey hadn’t been up, even that brief exchange did horrible things to his own pulse—and it was clear she wouldn’t put up with his lackadaisical approach to the message tubes.

So long as he responded, she’d spare him a visit. Linhardt reminded himself of this at every _thunk_ , every helpful suggestion about everything from the organization of their archives to what they served in the dining hall, and for the first time in ages he found himself keeping up with reports. His replies were brief, didn’t contribute much, and while Constance soaked up the praise for getting that lousy director of theirs to clean up his act, Linhardt took quiet notes on her work. She and Hanneman had a number of theories about Edelgard’s blood for him to pit against his own. It was nice to have such inspiring colleagues. 

Today, a trio of blood-filled vials stood on the mahogany table between Linhardt and Metodey. Next to them were three shallow dishes of venin green, refined into a clear state contrary to its name. Linhardt tore a piece of paper into thin strips while Metodey fidgeted, his eyes bouncing back and forth between the vials.

“What’s the occasion?” he asked, licking his lips.

“An experiment.” Linhardt handed him a paper strip. “Could I have some of your blood?”

Metodey looked at the strip, then Linhardt, and a grin spread across his face as he tugged aside his shirt’s collar, exposing his neck.

“...Not like that. Bite your thumb or something, put it on the paper.” Linhardt demonstrated the motion with a light nip of his own thumb, embarrassed to find that his mouth watered. He wiped his thumb on his shirt and looked away when Metodey raised his hand.

There was a quiet hiss before the paper returned to Linhardt with a red smear across it. Instead of biting his thumb, Metodey had sliced one of his claws across his forearm, up where his skin was still soft instead of leathery scales. Linhardt winced even as he thanked him, then dropped the paper into one of the dishes. The stain turned green before it faded into a rotten brown.

Metodey sucked at the cut on his arm while he watched. “So what’s all this for?”

“Like I said, an experiment. A rather simple one.” Linhardt opened his journal and noted the color. It meant a weak influence from the compulsions that Her Majesty’s blood encouraged. “I’d like you to say no to all the questions I ask.”

Apparently done with the cut, Metodey started fussing with his shirt’s buttons. “Why?”

“For the experiment.” Linhardt’s feather quill wiggled as he gestured at Metodey’s hands. “Why are you doing that?”

Metodey smirked. “No.”

Well. He walked right into that one. “It’s distracting.”

“Is it now?”

The shirt’s buttons were going to rip off at this rate, so Linhardt leaned across the table and pulled Metodey’s hand away. “Could you at least _try_ to take this seriously?”

“No.”

Linhardt inhaled sharply through his nose. “Right then. First question.” He put his quill to the page, ready to write. “Would you kill the Emperor?”

“Now that’s a silly one,” Metodey said through a snicker.

“Even so, I’d appreciate an answer.”

“Would I kill the Emperor?” He tipped over on the couch, muffling his laughter in the fabric. “Of course not!”

Linhardt waited until he was done. “Would you kill me?”

“Eh?” He rolled over and rested his head on the couch’s arm. “That doesn’t sound very fun, so no.”

That he evaluated it in terms of _fun_ was...not something Linhardt wanted to note. Though his page was still blank, he scribbled away in his mind. This seemed a promising line of inquiry.

“What if the Emperor asked you to?”

“Why would she ask?”

“I told you to say no.”

Metodey rolled one of his buttons between his claws. “ _Tch_...No.”

There it was. Linhardt noted the hesitation in his journal. “Thank you.”

He offered one of the vials to Metodey, who narrowed his eyes at it but sat up and snatched it all the same. The slurping made Linhardt bite his own lip; he kept his nose in his journal so he didn’t have to think about the other two vials waiting for someone to drink them.

The empty glass clinked between Metodey’s talons as he played with it. “Is that all?”

“No, we need to wait a bit.”

 _A bit_ was asking a lot of Metodey, who resorted to tossing the vial in the air so he could catch it, until he missed one too many times and it cracked against the mahogany table.

“Sorry.” He said it as a thoughtless gesture, like picking his nose. “What are we waiting for?”

“There’s a few things I’d like to test.”

“Can I sit with you?”

...It was tempting, despite Metodey being so _Metodey_ about this whole affair. There was room on his chaise lounge for two people, after all. “That would also be distracting. Best to stay over there until we’re done.”

Metodey huffed, fluttering his bangs in the process. “Then get on with it.”

Linhardt handed him more paper. “I’ll need another sample.”

This test resulted in a greener color, like seaweed. It was difficult to gauge how strong of an influence this meant.

During the war, Linhardt had studied the volunteers who used Edelgard’s blood to aid them in battle—led by Caspar, look where that had gotten him—but the focus had been its effects on the body more so than the mind. Drinking it imparted a form of loyalty, an compulsion to appease that didn’t always look like Metodey’s, but how much did one have to consume before it overwhelmed them? He suspected Hubert knew the exact quantity but kept that knowledge to himself.

Outside of the palace, where Edelgard’s influence seeped into the cracks of everyone around her, he couldn’t invoke this directly. He could, however, try to plant a seed that Metodey would tend to on his own.

Linhardt opened his journal again. “Remember to say no.” He dipped his quill in an inkwell and scribbled down a few notes. “Though I should think it obvious that Her Majesty would expect an honest answer more than anything else.”

Metodey had resorted to unraveling the loose threads at his shirt’s hem. He nodded.

“Would you kill me if the Emperor asked you to?”

“This again?”

“Well? Would you?”

Metodey shook his head.

“Next vial, please.”

Metodey gnawed at his lip while they waited. Linhardt wasn’t sure how long they’d need for its effects to take root, but every time he glanced over and saw the cuts on Metodey’s arm—with blood on his lips now, too—it stung Linhardt’s skin with sympathetic pain.

“You don’t have to sit around on the couch. Just not with me. Feel free to read or...exercise or something.”

Metodey remained where he was, muttering to himself. At least it kept him occupied. Linhardt kicked his feet up on his lounge and settled in with his journal tucked underneath him in case Metodey got any ideas.

When he next came to, he was on his side with one arm hanging off the edge and Metodey kneeling at the table, stretched across it to hold his hand. He couldn’t have nodded off for long, since the light in the office hadn’t changed and while he didn’t know when Metodey had moved, it was enough of a reach that he couldn’t have held the position for more than a few minutes.

“Are we done?” Metodey squeezed his hand before he let go and flopped back on the couch. “ _I’m_ going to die of boredom.”

“Not quite.” Linhardt yawned and sat up. His journal hadn’t moved. “You’re doing well though.”

Metodey swabbed the next paper across his lips; he’d developed some other cuts while Linhardt had his eyes closed. Minor as they were, he took Metodey’s hand again and healed them while the paper’s color developed.

It bloomed into a vibrant, almost noxious green.

“I’d still like you to say no. Would you kill me if the Emperor asked you to?”

It was some time before Metodey answered. “I would,” he said, and then quieter, “but I wouldn’t like it.”

“I see.” He noted the quantities it’d taken to reach this point. There were individual characteristics to take into account, slight differences in how it affected people…

“Does that bother you?” Metodey asked.

Linhardt kept writing. “No, it’s about what I’d expect.”

They still had one vial. No point in asking again, though perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to confirm the answer. Not that it was an interesting one, for despite Metodey’s veneration of him, if it came to a request from the Emperor herself, how could one of her devotees do anything other than obey? Metodey only listened to him when it was convenient, anyway. 

There were other things he could investigate. If he subtracted Edelgard from the equation, what then?

“You don’t have to say no to this one.” He looked up from his journal. “Would you kill me if _I_ asked you to?”

Metodey squirmed on the couch. “...Why?”

He’d been a violent man before whatever Edelgard’s blood had done to him, Linhardt was sure of that much. How did that compare to Metodey’s obsession with him? Obsession might not have been the right word—that was a bit much—but he didn’t know what else to call it.

“Morbid curiosity. So?”

“I...don’t know.” Metodey chewed on his thumb. “I don’t know.” He popped it out of his mouth. “Why do you want me to kill you?”

“It’s a hypothetical question. You’d do it if I asked?"

A loud _thwack_ startled Linhardt when Metodey slammed his hand against the table. “Why the hell do you want to know!”

He withdrew it a moment later, leaving behind five pinprick gouges in the wood, and raked it through his hair. All the while he muttered about how he didn’t want Linhardt to go and swore about what a pointless experiment this was, a stupid test—

Linhardt stared at the last vial. There were other things he’d wanted to ask but now wasn’t a good time. He’d unraveled whatever emotional thread kept Metodey together, and once it was clear that Metodey wouldn’t make it out of his anxious spiral anytime soon, Linhardt took the vial and downed it in one swift gulp. It spread a pleasant warmth down his throat and through his chest, like soothing tea—disgust always followed when he noticed the sensation.

He waited for a bit longer, then cleared his throat. “I’m not going anywhere. No one’s asking you to do anything right now.”

Metodey’s eyes darted between him and the empty vial. “You’d come back if you left, wouldn’t you?”

A curious thing tugged at his words. He wanted to say yes, but what came out was a mild “probably” that did little to comfort Metodey. His next impulse was to elaborate, since yes he’d try in a general sense, it was only that there were too many factors for him to say “yes” with confidence, but he doubted that would calm Metodey down.

“It’s true, what I said earlier about Her Majesty and honesty.” He offered his hand to Metodey, palm upwards. “Ask me whatever you want. I’ll be honest.”

For a while all he did was fidget, gnawing at his lip again and clacking his claws. Linhardt thought he’d go for his hand, kept it awkwardly in the air between them—Metodey reached for it only to flinch away at the last moment.

“Do you even like having me around?”

Linhardt wanted to say yes. A simple, uncomplicated “yes” would surely help. It wasn’t a simple “no”, either, or even an ambiguous “probably”, but something else that was difficult to articulate. His troublesome guest kept him too busy to waste away on his couch.

What ended up coming out was, “Life has been rather interesting since you showed up.”

Since his words weren’t cooperating, he took the initiative and held Metodey’s hand. That was enough to ease the furrow in Metodey’s brow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On one of my email accounts, I didn't empty the inbox for about a decade. I think linhardt would be like this


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It took him about 36,000 words, but Hubert finally returns! [You can see the art here.](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q-ZUbta761JcmcomHkecUeYK7Fs-zMKI/view?usp=sharing) Coincidentally, this chapter also has graphic violence.

Though yesterday’s experiment had been enlightening, it hadn’t taught him anything about how to resist the compulsions induced by Edelgard’s blood. If it was a question of mental fortitude, apparently he and Metodey weren’t up to the task, but with only two people to test, how was he supposed to know?

It vexed him as he was curled up in his bed, _Metallurgy for Alchemists_ in his lap and three blades gingerly placed nearby so that they wouldn’t sink towards him whenever he shifted his weight. Less than ideal conditions for research, but his bedroom was the one place where Metodey wouldn’t disturb him, and his mischievous roommate of sorts didn’t need to know about any weapons in the office.

Linhardt picked up one of the blades and examined it, mindful of the edge. They came from a set of dragon claws and Metodey already had those, or something like them, so were these any more dangerous?

It’d be helpful if they were. Something about the steel or the process of forging the gauntlets these were inserted into was hazardous to a variety of creatures. There weren’t any dragons to worry about these days and as far as he could tell no actual dragon claws were used in their construction, so perhaps they’d gain a new name. An unpleasant thought…

He set the blade aside. If he were a different sort of man there were obvious ways to test their efficacy against those who drank Edelgard’s blood, which carried draconic influence—another of those things he suspected other people knew—but even the thought of testing this with himself made him sick.

Still, all these theories wouldn’t test themselves. Not just the macabre ones—he might’ve coaxed Metodey’s cleaning solution into something a bit less lethal, but there was no way to tell without drinking it. That prospect was easier to stomach; he could handle poisons, provided they didn’t make blood leak from any orifices. Asking Lysithea was out of the question even though in a rational sense she was a fine candidate if all he wanted to know was toxicity, and anyway, if he had lab rats he could start with those, and Metodey would probably agree to anything even without the full details. If Lysithea got mad about that, well, what did she expect him to do?

Metodey was the simplest option from his limited pool of candidates. It wasn’t like he could get Hanneman or Constance or any of his other staff involved, not with such a sensitive matter, but then was Metodey any more trustworthy?

...The evidence was stacked against him.

Above all else, Linhardt needed someone he could trust. He wasn’t going to find that at the Institute, but as he stared at his reflection in one of the gauntlet blades, dark and distorted by the steel, he thought somewhere else to look.

◆◆◆

On his way to Enbarr’s coliseum, Linhardt stopped at a booth that sold masks. Many of the people he’d passed had them—classic animals like rams and eagles, faux helms that offered little protection, a snarling dragon that seemed in poor taste—but he hadn’t thought to bring one and it couldn’t hurt to blend in.

A crude imitation of Caspar with blue lumps of paper hair molded around his horns stared back at Linhardt. Looking at it made him cringe, so instead he went to a series of cat masks and pointed at a black and white one.

He regretted the choice after a few minutes of standing in line for a ticket, as the mask was stuffy and had uncomfortably tight straps no matter how he adjusted them. They’d had half-masks available, too, but until this moment Linhardt never understood the point of those if one wanted to conceal their identity. (It turned out that clear breathing was worth more than discretion.) He’d take his mask off once he was inside, though if he actually watched any fighting it might be nice to have his vision obscured…

No, it’d be better to take it off.

By the time Linhardt made it to the front of the line, the man across the counter was about to lower a shutter.

“Excuse me,” Linhardt said, “I’d like to buy a ticket.”

“All sold out.”

Linhardt glanced at the arches leading into the arena. Lines of eager spectators waited to get inside after waiting for their tickets—an uneasy stone sank in his stomach when he thought of how long _he_ might have to wait—and he saw a guard drag out two boys who must have tried to sneak in.

“There’s room for one more person, don’t you think?”

The attendant lowered the shutter.

People behind him groused and someone elbowed him aside so they could reason with the wooden shutter, or at least shout at it once reason failed. Linhardt suspected the attendant was already gone, so he left them to it and checked his coin purse to see if he could find a scalper or something. A less than ideal solution, but he wasn’t as spry as he used to be and probably wouldn’t fare any better than those two boys if he tried anything else.

Upon finding someone else selling tickets and learning of the price, he ended up skulking around the coliseum to assess its vulnerabilities.

Caspar sent letters every now and then, ones with such elegant handwriting that they had to be through a scribe. Penmanship had never been one of his friend’s strengths, and that was before the size of his claws became an issue. It seemed like his usual boasting whenever he described the crowds his matches drew, but now that Linhardt was here the embellishments weren’t that large. He could hear them even outside, all the chatter and raucous laughter at whatever they showed before the main attraction, an obnoxious buzzing like flies around carrion—now that thought didn’t help his stomach. 

Letters were so much more convenient. If it were any other topic, no matter how intimate, he wouldn’t care if whoever sorted through Caspar’s mail read it, but even he and Lysithea didn’t write directly about their work with each other.

He wasn’t aware of someone else with him in the shadows until a soft voice spoke behind him. “Excuse me, Director Hevring?”

Were it not for the use of his title, he’d have thought it was a keen-eyed guard, but when he turned around he came face-to-face with someone maskless and dressed in plain brown clothes.

“My lord wishes to speak with you.”

◆◆◆

The messenger led him into the arena, through a stone corridor, and down a set of tucked-away stairs before she vanished back into the shadows. He was left in a dimly-lit room with a glass wall in front of him and a few chairs. Underneath the audience seating, he could tell, by the muffled cacophony above and the view through the glass wall.

Someone was in one of the chairs.

Linhardt stepped forward and noted their dark robes as well as their bird-like mask; there weren’t many people it could be.

“Good evening, Director.”

“Hello, Hubert,” Linhardt said, removing his own mask.

Hubert did the same, revealing a smirk. “Please, have a seat.”

After a moment spent rubbing his chin and debating between his options, he sat next to Hubert. The view was closer than any ticket could have bought, for better or worse. Linhardt suspected this would be worse.

“I wasn’t aware you had an interest in this sort of thing,” Hubert said. “There’s no Crests for you to ogle.”

“I’m just visiting Caspar.”

“You should’ve known better than to come now. Even if it’s a quick fight, I imagine it’ll take a while for him to wash off all the blood.”

Linhardt’s grip on his chair tightened. “...So? I’ve seen him like that plenty of times.”

“How unlike you.” Hubert crossed one knee over the other and folded his hands on top of it. “While you’re here, why not update me on your work? You write such brief reports.”

“You’re a busy man—I don’t want to waste your time.”

“I appreciate it.”

Something rumbled in the distance. Linhardt felt it through the stones, in the vibration that ran up his legs and chilled his blood. A roar sounded beneath the crowd’s noise.

“Hanneman and Constance have made excellent progress.” Linhardt slumped in his chair. “I don’t know what you expect from me.”

“Lady Edelgard entrusted you with this task for a reason. My only expectation is that you won’t disappoint her.”

“Of course,” Linhardt said through grit teeth.

He ought to leave. There wasn’t anything to gain from this verbal sparring, and if Hubert was offended at his lack of manners then that was Hubert’s problem, but a gentle hand at his wrist stopped him when he leaned forward.

Hubert smiled. “The show is about to start.”

Linhardt jerked away from his touch.

Another roar made its way through the room, the sound itself muffled by the opening of another wall, stone scraping against stone. The crowd cheered on a figure that emerged, bounded into the arena on all fours, kicked up dirt as he skidded to a stop. It was Caspar.

Caspar, who stood up on his hind legs, which folded like a wyvern’s, his arms spread wide as he spun around, though he was missing a wyvern’s wings. Although his hands had grown large enough for him to run with, they were still articulated like a human’s. There were plenty of human bits to him, really—patches of skin without scales, his bright blue hair, his smile, even with fangs.

Linhardt worried his lip between his own fangs. His heart ached to see Caspar like this, but underneath it was the same fond warmth he usually felt when he saw his friend.

One of the arena’s other walls scraped open, but the creature that leapt from the darkness had shed all of its human vestiges. It tackled Caspar while he was in the middle of a whoop—Linhardt joined the crowd in a gasp—and it was difficult to see what went on in the dust that stirred until the creature was thrown out and slammed into a wall.

The impact rattled the room. Linhardt wasn’t sure how he reacted, but it prompted Hubert to thread their fingers together and squeeze his hand. That was enough to ease the furrow in Linhardt's brow.

He hated that, the thought that Hubert had this all under control, that even if something went awry he’d protect Linhardt in that silent but thorough way of his. The arena was surely warded from here to Faerghus and back, nevermind all of Hubert’s other preventative measures.

As Caspar and the beast exchanged blows, Linhardt caught a red light that left smears in his vision whenever it moved; Hubert’s booth was close enough for him to glimpse a Crest stone embedded into the creature when its head was smacked against the glass.

“That’s—” Linhardt flinched when Caspar bashed it in again, leaving dislodged teeth behind. The fresh spatter on the window made it harder to see, but he was certain. “That’s artificial.”

“From the war,” Hubert said. “We’re still finding poor souls like this.”

Linhardt couldn’t stop staring at the teeth in the dirt. The crowd’s roar was muffled as if he’d dunked his head underwater, his mind closing itself to his surroundings. Caspar, he—he was an experiment. Their whole battalion had been. The people in the isolation ward, how many ended up here? Linhardt tried not to think about it whenever there was a request for a transfer, and there were canine fangs in the dirt along with human molars—Now there were laws against all these things, they weren’t supposed to happen and yet—

Here he was.

Even through the smear on the window, Linhardt could tell Caspar was grinning. Funny to think he’d once considered going for the knees a lousy trick. Funny what a decade of war could do to people.

Hubert stroked his thumb across Linhardt’s white knuckles. “It’s a rather nasty business.”

Everyone seemed hungry for blood, Edelgard’s or otherwise.

“...It’ll only get nastier.” He didn’t mean to say it aloud, but the thought tumbled out anyway. “You do realize the Empire will eat itself alive if something happens to Edelgard, right?”

Hubert’s smirk crept into the corner of his vision. “A fitting end for the nobility, don’t you think? Her Majesty has ensured that her ideals will come to fruition even in her absence.”

He scoffed. Hubert wasn’t one of the so-called inoculated. He couldn’t be—not without ending up like Caspar—though the slight curve of his gloves made Linhardt wonder. “Is that the sort of ending you want for Ferdinand? Bernadetta?” His own voice sounded distant. “...Me?”

Hubert retracted his hand. “I thought you wanted to die.”

Linhardt stared at the cat mask in his own lap. “I’ve been eating again. Surely you’ve noticed.”

“Yes, but now you’re antagonizing me, which many consider a form of suicide.”

His voice lacked any sincere malice; they both chuckled. Linhardt reminded himself that it wouldn’t be a joke if Hubert knew what he was up to. Whatever fondness was left between them, it was hollowed out and cavernous compared to his love for the Empire, or perhaps more accurately, for the two who lead it.

...Hubert _was_ still fond of him, wasn’t he? Despite what the Emperor’s darkest shadow wanted everyone to believe, he had his vulnerabilities just like anyone else. It’d be nice to be one of them.

Linhardt reached for Hubert’s hand again, twisted around so that he could lean forward enough to reach Hubert’s lips. He paused, their breath mingling, and noted how wide the other man’s eyes were, how his pulse fluttered—his own or Hubert’s, it was hard to tell.

Before he found out who would close the gap, the crowd fell silent. It prompted them both to look out the window, where Caspar stood in the arena’s center with the creature’s jaws wrenched wide open. It made these awful sounds as he pulled them further apart, hoarse and high-pitched and frantic—

Linhardt closed his eyes at the snap.

His head pounded from the cheering and hollering and shouting that thundered above him. When he dared to look, Caspar was parading around the arena, drenched in blood, matching his audience’s fever pitch.

What remained of the beast were the dark ribbons of muscle that held them together; everything else had melted away save for a conspicuous lump beneath one pile of flesh.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [art for this chapter](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QKFZgveckxT70gtZFg80hepKecYCowi8/view?usp=sharing) is the most cheerful one yet! ...However the chapter contents are some of the saddest OTL
> 
> There's also a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to [The Needlepress School](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21379846), where I'm not entirely sure what happens to Fleche, but at least in Contagion timeline it results in a book deal. Good for her!

It felt like Linhardt spent another decade outside, back in the crisp night air before he felt composed enough to head for Caspar’s quarters. This was one of the few times his identity was good for anything—the guard didn’t recognize him but informed Caspar of his presence once Linhardt mumbled about who he was. Maybe it would’ve been worth trying on the ticketmaster, would’ve saved him a lot of trouble if so, but there was nothing to be done about that now.

The guard led him through a human-sized door into a human-sized room, which opened into another room that felt more like a great hall with a much larger door at the opposite end. The walls were an aggressive red, brighter still against the black stone furniture. Caspar was curled up in a nest of blankets, mirroring the cat snug against his side, though when he saw Linhardt his face lit up and he clambered out. His cat wasn’t nearly as excited about the disruption.

Despite the room’s size, Caspar made it across in only a few strides. He scooped Linhardt up in a hug and spun around—all the red in the room smeared together, bleeding into the metallic scent that clung to his friend.

“Caspar, please—”

After one last spin, Caspar set him down. “Alright, alright, maybe I got a bit too excited. Can you blame me?” He crouched to Linhardt’s height. “It’s been ages!”

Linhardt rubbed an ache from his shoulder. “I suppose.”

Still beaming good cheer, Caspar uncurled one claw and pointed at the mask Linhardt had bought. “Bergliez shorthair? Good taste.” Caspar looked over his own shoulder. “What do you think, Beef?”

She trotted over, her tail straight in the air at the sound of her own name. Linhardt bent over enough for her to sniff his hand; the way she butted against him suggested she remembered him, and though her face matched the black-and-white mask, it was much softer.

“You should see the ones they’ve got of me. Bet I have one around—”

“They had those too.”

“Oh, sweet.” Caspar stood up to his full height. “But what’s the occasion? It really has been a while, y’know.”

The way he said it sent a spike of guilt through Linhardt, who toed his boot at the floor. “I just wanted to see you.”

Caspar’s shadow left his view. “Did you see my match?”

“...Yeah.”

“Wasn’t it cool when I—”

Linhardt looked up, cutting him off with a raised hand. “Do you know who that was?”

“Huh?” When Caspar blinked, a thin membrane slid across his eye. 

“There was a person in there, wasn’t there?”

“Not anymore.”

Linhardt went to a nearby stool—it was more like a stone slab or a table for him—sat down, and rolled the edge of his sleeve between his fingers.

Caspar’s tail twitched. “You end up here, you signed up for it, or you’re a threat to the Empire.” He crossed his arms. “Either way you’ve gotta be prepared to die—Hell, even I am.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

He shrugged. “You worry too much, Linhardt.”

A constricting shroud settled over Linhardt, one that compelled him to remain silent. If _he_ ended up in the arena, surely the Empire he’d done so much for wouldn’t be so cruel as to make his friend his executioner—for Caspar’s sake, if nothing else. His cat jumped up onto the stool and rubbed against Linhardt’s thigh for attention; he scratched her ears. Once Caspar got tired of shifting awkwardly, he went down on all fours and circled the stool.

“What’s with all this doom and gloom?” He leaned over it with his arms folded under his head. “You doing okay?”

All the potential responses churned Linhardt’s thoughts. That and the ever-present red made it harder to sort through them, and even if he wasn’t distracted by the cat at his side or Hubert’s lingering touch, there wasn’t a simple answer. Underneath all that, the questions he wanted to ask Caspar twisted a knot in his stomach.

“Better than I have been.”

Caspar slipped one arm out from under his head and reached for Linhardt, stroking the back of one claw against his cheek. “You can talk about it with me, y’know.” He smiled when Linhardt leaned into the touch. “If someone’s giving you trouble, I’ll take care of it.”

Now wouldn’t that be something? One solid punch was all Caspar would need—Hubert made a formidable opponent, sure, but he didn’t have the sturdiest bones. Linhardt had mended them enough times to know.

He hopped off the stool, pacing much as Caspar had while he walked around the room, albeit on two limbs rather than four. Though Linhardt felt like a doll in a miniature house, everything here was sized perfectly for his friend, even the medals displayed on one wall, which fastened with clasps so that they could be worn without going over Caspar’s head. 

Upon closer inspection, there were a few things meant for someone closer to Linhardt’s size. Caspar had posters and what seemed to be letters pinned to the wall beside his medals—Linhardt recognized his own handwriting in one of them, skimmed over gushing praise from some anonymous fan in another—and the books on his lone bookcase were a much more comfortable size as well.

A thin book lying on the shelf rather than tucked in with the others caught Linhardt’s eye. He ran his fingers across its cover. “You’ve got a nice place.”

“Now you’re just being weird.” Caspar followed him to the bookcase. “...My aunt sent that.”

 _Memoirs of a Red-Stained Rose_. The front matter boasted of sensation, a glimpse into a world of revelry and the glory of triumph that didn’t match the tone of the work at all, Linhardt decided, after skimming a few poems. He wondered who wrote that bit about glory; it was clearly in there to sell. What he saw spoke of bloodshed, loss, survival, and even then she didn’t seem all that happy about it. It made Linhardt’s chest ache.

“Quite a bit of doom and gloom in here,” he said.

“Yeeeah, not my kinda thing. Still proud of her.” Caspar crouched down to his height again. “Sometimes it’s good to get stuff like that outside your head.” He poked Linhardt’s forehead and, gentle as he tried to be, it still made Linhardt stumble. “Is that your problem?”

Linhardt snapped the book shut. “I don’t like to think about it.”

“Fair enough, can’t say it was pretty. Much better these days.”

He looked up. “You call this better?”

“Think about it—really think.” Another prod, this one on top of Linhardt’s head. “It’s just me and whoever’s in the pit. No armies, no marches, no starving—none of that.”

Linhardt tried to smooth his hair down. It was a lost cause—he ended up tugging out what remained of his bun. “I suppose that does sound nicer.”

Could he change someone like Caspar, whose entire body had been refashioned? Though his mind seemed intact now, Linhardt knew what would happen if he starved—they’d learned that the hard way during the war—and it wasn’t like what happened with demonic beasts. Even in death, those touched by Her Majesty retained their warped forms.

Would things be different if he had a Crest? The insatiable hunger may have still led to something like Metodey, and even if he were a model citizen there were subtle changes that touched them all, Crested or otherwise, but—Caspar was already a model citizen, wasn’t he? 

Linhardt held the book to his chest. “Mind if I hold onto this? Since it’s not your kind of thing.”

“Doesn’t seem like yours, but sure.”

“You can tell your aunt she’s made it into a library.”

Caspar followed his gaze to the door. “...Leaving already?”

“I’ve got a lot to do.” Linhardt tucked a strand of loose hair behind his ear. “But I’ll try to write more.”

“You better!”

Caspar scooped him up again in one smooth motion, twirling around with Linhardt much more secure in his arms this time; he rested his head against Caspar’s shoulder and brushed his hand across the scales there.

“Say, Caspar?” Being this close, he heard Caspar’s heart flutter at the sound of his own name, or maybe hearing it in Linhardt’s mouth. “Haven’t you missed it? Back when things weren’t like...this.”

“What, you mean back when I was a small fry?” Caspar spun him once more before setting him down. “Nah.”

The room swam in his vision as he leaned against his friend for support. Caspar’s cat swirled around his feet again, demanding attention, but once he felt steady enough Linhardt ignored her and went to the door. He didn’t leave, not yet, but paused in the entryway with its lower ceiling where Caspar had to walk on all fours to follow him.

Linhardt smiled—he didn’t want to leave on such a sour note. “I guess it was a silly question.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter puts Contagion over 40,000 words, wow...! If you've made it this far, you've probably contracted some strain of metovirus
> 
> You can see the art for this chapter [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pKbB-LPkiCRh1Dh50Oi-8Bn_b6QPtvcb/view?usp=sharing), and while there's not any specific content warnings I do lightly tap the "unhealthy relationships" tag here

Progress, scientific or otherwise, always came with a degree of risk. Linhardt had endured much in his pursuit of knowledge over the years—attempts on his life from his research subjects or the work itself, irreparable damage to his body and soul, all the names people called him when he violated their privacy—that was all part of the process. If you factored those risks into your plans there wasn’t much to worry about, Linhardt reminded himself as he stared at a beaker on his desk. It was next to an antitoxin.

Linhardt sloshed around the orange liquid in the beaker. Metodey had included several types of acid in his recipe; they were neutralized now, probably, but if not then an antitoxin wasn’t going to do much for a melted esophagus.

He checked and double checked the amounts of various ingredients in his journal, squinting at the numbers when the ink seemed to vibrate on the page. There was so much to fret over and double check as of late that he hadn’t slept in quite some time; he didn’t bother keeping track of exactly when.

Right as he was sorting out whether he’d added twelve or twenty one drops of vitriol, the creaking wood of his moving table and the books that nearly slid off it distracted him. There was a dull thud against the rug underneath, then another, and on the third attempt the rug was pushed up by the trapdoor that led to Metodey’s room.

Metodey peeked his head out, smiling when he saw Linhardt.

Linhardt squinted at him.

“What?” He looked around. “I knew you were alone.”

Linhardt watched him climb up from the trapdoor. “Since when could you open that?”

“It’s not that hard to figure out.”

While Linhardt had never factored security into his private retreats, they at least had glyph-based locks to keep any busybodies out. His own Crest was his usual choice, since he could trace its curves in his sleep, and he’d even modified it so that it was easier to draw and to keep Hanneman from figuring it out. Metodey still didn’t know his Crest, did he? Ah, but he watched Linhardt even now, and had his own journals with his own experimental scribbles...

“No one’ll notice me if you’re alone. And anyway, aren’t you lonely?” Metodey plucked the antitoxin off the desk and held it in a crack of light that escaped between a window’s curtains. “Not that I am, I’m very good at being alone.”

“Put that down.”

He did so only to shove a stack of papers off the desk and perch on its corner. “But I _am_ bored.”

Linhardt’s eyebrow twitched as the papers scattered across his floor. It got him to stand up with a sigh, gather them save for one that slid under his desk, and move them to his table. One of the books already stacked there was thinner than the rest; he brought it back with him.

“Then read this,” he said as he handed it over. “Quite morbid poetry, I think you’ll like it.”

Though Metodey’s face lit up at that description, he flipped through only a few pages before he tossed it aside in favor of hovering over Linhardt. “What are you up to?”

...Well, the last time it came up his input had been surprisingly helpful. Linhardt raised the experimental beaker. “I need to see if this solution is non-toxic.”

“Sounds dangerous. I’ll drink it for a kiss.”

He set the beaker on the other side of the desk, far away from Metodey. “I’m not asking you to.”

“Doesn’t have to be on the lips.”

Linhardt pinched the bridge of his nose. “You haven’t been drinking your mouthwash again, have you? It’s supposed to be a rinse.”

Metodey’s gaze shifted to the floor. “It’s...precious.” He hopped off the desk. “Far too precious to use.”

Linhardt pulled his own legs closer to his body as Metodey knelt in search of the paper still under his desk. He thought Metodey would have more to say on the matter, but once he’d found the paper all he did was set it with the others and tidy up the stack, thumbing through them while he was at it, nosy as ever.

The poetry book remained on the desk. Would it end up wherever he’d stashed the mouthwash, an offering at some inscrutable shrine? It was a vivid mental image—Metodey kneeling in supplication, baubles and glass bottles arranged on top of this book, biting his lip with one of Linhardt’s handkerchiefs in his hand, which slid down his abs until it was between his legs...how vulgar. Lysithea was quick to remind him what a creep Metodey was whenever he came up in idle conversation. It was hard to disagree, though he hadn’t told her the extent of this man’s obsession.

But Metodey wasn’t really obsessed with _him_ , a nuance that Lysithea failed to grasp. Whenever Metodey gave him a journal to read, it wasn’t Linhardt scrawled in his pages—it was an abstract ideal, a distraction from that chronic boredom of his, the same blood-addled zeal he had for Her Majesty, though not _quite_ as intense. A delusion that Linhardt suspected it would pass along with the others if it hadn’t already. If not a delusion, then a flair for the dramatic and an overactive imagination paired with too much free time. Little to no basis in reality either way.

Linhardt closed his own journal. “...I’m not that special.”

Metodey looked up from the papers. “Eh?”

“A gift from me should be the same as a gift from anyone else.”

“That’s not true.” He rolled the corner of one paper between his thumb and forefinger before he set the whole stack down, returned to the desk, and touched Linhardt’s shoulder.

“Why not?”

“You’re a kind man, patient.” Metodey slid his talons under a lock of Linhardt’s hair, then leaned close enough to inhale. “You smell good.”

He was definitely up to something perverted down in that room of his.

Linhardt leaned away. “Those are personal opinions. Entirely different from knowing who I am, what I do, things I like or dislike…”

“You’re a researcher.” Metodey let go of the hair and swept his arm across the office in an all-encompassing gesture. “You research things. You like Crests, but can’t stomach blood. Or killing people, but you’ve done it anyway.” He drummed his claws against the desk, voice sinking to a mumble. “I bet I’d have killed you if we met earlier.”

The floor creaked as Linhardt scooted his chair back, even though he pretended not to hear that last bit. Best not to correct him. “How do you know I’ve killed anyone?”

“You have scars.” Metodey pointed at a spot near Linhardt’s collarbone, where his shirt hid a thin line across the skin underneath. “And nightmares. Sometimes I hear them.”

Linhardt ran his finger across the scar. He didn’t have many and it’d been some time since Metodey snuck any peeks at them, but of course he’d remember. “I see.”

The way Metodey picked him apart with these observations made him feel as if he were under an essar scope. So too did Metodey’s beady eyes with their bright center surrounded by darkness, the same narrow focus as when looking through an eyepiece. Linhardt had his own observations about Metodey—all his bad habits, the tell-tale jitters of his boredom, the spiteful attitude towards office trash and unfortunate bugs that these things inspired—but they were shallow concerns. It was tolerable to a degree. Caspar was prone to that sort of restlessness, after all, though without the banal cruelty.

What else was there? 

“...I suppose I don’t know much about you in the grand scheme of things.” Linhardt cut Metodey off with a raised hand when he opened his mouth. “I don’t want to hear about you killing anyone, or anything nasty for that matter.”

“It’s been a while since I did anything like that.” He wrung his hands as he looked around, most likely in search of something to fuss with. “Being a guard is pretty dull. Er, not that I’m complaining—it’s an honor and the pay’s great.”

“Didn’t you used to be a mercenary? Quite the leap in status.”

He scoffed. “Her Majesty knew I wasn’t like those other vermin.”

“Life as a vermin, scurrying about, risking your hide for every meal.” How exhausting, Linhardt decided, as he walked his fingers along his char’s arm.

“A little risk makes a lot of fun.” Metodey sighed and turned his gaze to the curtains with their sliver of light. “It was an awful lot of fun. I was my own boss at the end of the day, really. No sitting around, no boxes, and the sky…”

“Do you ever miss it?”

There was a long pause before he nodded. “...But I enjoy serving Her Majesty, wouldn’t dream of anything else.”

“Of course.”

“So don’t tell Lysithea about any of that other crap.”

If Metodey’s usual post had been at the Emperor’s throne room, Linhardt doubted he saw much of the sky. Neither did Edelgard while she was in there, but at least she could leave, and anyway, it wasn’t like Metodey would’ve stayed in the same spot all the time. He’d leave too, go see his—maybe not friends, but he’d probably go out drinking, or gambling, or indulging in all manner of vices.

Comrades. He mentioned comrades every now and then. The way he wrote about them reminded Linhardt of the poetry sitting on his desk, next to Metodey. He reached for it but stopped with his hand on Metodey’s thigh.

“You won’t tell her, right?”

He must have led soldiers during the war. Strange to think of anyone listening to Metodey’s orders, though maybe he was different back then. Did he keep up with any of his surviving comrades? Or were all his connections forged with the same blood-soaked chain that linked the two of them? If it weren’t for Edelgard’s blood, he’d have no reason to hang around someone like Metodey, who’d be free to do whatever he wished in full view of the Goddess, assuming something like that existed up in the sky. Possibly. This was all speculation.

“...Linhardt?”

“Hm?”

Metodey leaned down and looked him in the eye. “You’ll put in a good word for me, won’t you? Then I can get back to work.”

Linhardt turned his attention to the beaker with its orange solution. “Right. Work.”

Which he couldn’t do much of with Metodey perched on his desk. Linhardt meant to push him but ended up running his hand along Metodey’s thigh, trying not to think about the artery under the skin there.

It worked out, as Metodey slid into Linhardt’s lap instead. The hand hadn’t been an invitation—not exactly—but he could see why it might seem like one. Metodey was a comfortable weight for now, so Linhardt allowed him to settle, though he kept the other man at a distance with a hand on his chest.

“Were you serious earlier? About helping with my work?”

Metodey draped his arms around Linhardt’s shoulders. “You seem a bit distracted.”

One of Linhardt’s hands crept up Metodey’s shirt; lifting the fabric revealed some of the scales along his torso, peculiar scarring from one of the many things they didn’t know much about. Linhardt didn’t get to see them that often outside of shirtless workouts. They’d asked about the injuries when he first arrived, though hadn’t received a coherent answer at the time. (The current hypothesis was that Hubert had something to do with it.)

“I suppose,” Linhardt said, using his other hand to tug Metodey’s collar aside and examine his neck scales, which were pleasantly smooth against his lips.

“There’s all sorts of ways I can help.” Pinpricks of pleasure spread from where Metodey’s talons massaged his scalp.

Between all the vials he’d set aside for research, the skin between his teeth, the pulse he covered with his lips—it unnerved him, how the phantom sensation of sinking his fangs in made his mouth water. So too did the red crescents left behind on Metodey’s skin once he leaned away.

Linhardt wiped his mouth on his own sleeve. “Well then, there’s your kiss.”

“That’s all?”

“You said—and I quote—that it didn’t have to be on the lips.” He shooed Metodey out of his lap. “Technically, that was a lot more than one kiss.”

Though he rolled his eyes and huffed about it, Metodey grabbed the experimental beaker, then gave it a swirl. “So you just want me to drink this?” 

“First I need to check—”

He tipped it back like a flask and by the time Linhardt made it to his feet, the beaker was empty.

“And you want to know if it’s toxic, right?” Metodey spun the beaker in the air and caught it by the stem. “I’m an excellent test subject, immune to all the amateur stuff—”

While he went on boasting, Linhardt noted his pulse, watched the rise and fall of his chest, kept an eye out for any spasms or coughing...At least he could confirm that Metodey’s esophagus was intact and unmelted.

“—but the taste could use some work.”

Ah. There it was. A little hiccup in Metodey’s chest as he tried to suppress a cough.

Linhardt touched his back. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Metodey insisted, even as a bigger cough escaped. “Went down the wrong pipe, that’s all.”

He set the beaker down before leaning over the desk, more coughs making it past his bravado until his entire body shook under Linhardt’s hand. Alarming, but this was why he’d brought an antitoxin, so all he had to do was—

They reached for the bottle at the same time and knocked it to the floor. It bounced without breaking but rolled under the desk.

Metodey knelt to grab it only to end up on all fours, heaving, while Linhardt crouched beside him. A spell would do the trick—all Linhardt had to do was dredge the right one up from his memories, which were rather scattered at the moment between the lack of sleep and this foamy spittle he saw drip onto his floor, but this was a simple problem, he’d dealt with far worse, and there wasn’t even any blood so how bad was it?

...Metodey’s face was red enough that it looked ready to burst. Linhardt closed his eyes—it might help him remember—and sure enough the glyphs eventually came to mind and he traced them out while trying not to dwell on that particular color.

There was a solid _thwump_. Linhardt cracked his eyes open to Metodey flat against the floor. His body shook again, which made Linhardt’s heart leap against his own rib cage until he realized it was laughter.

Metodey rolled over, drool still at the corner of his mouth. “See? Fine.”

Linhardt wiped it away with his sleeve, then sat against the desk and sighed. “You could’ve easily stayed _not fine_.”

“Eh, I knew you wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me.” Metodey’s face remained that hideous color as he sat beside Linhardt. He cleared his throat. “Whatever was in there does bad things to your airways.”

“Don’t be so reckless—even if it’s fun for _you_ , it’s not fun for _me_.”

“Weren’t you going to drink it alone?” Metodey asked. “Seems like quite the gamble.”

There was still a bit of a mess on the floor. Since it was the same as what he’d already wiped on his sleeve, he left Metodey at the desk and went to clean it up.

“You’re lucky I’m a great test subject.”

It would’ve been fine if Linhardt drank his own poison; the only reason they’d had an issue in the first place was Metodey knocking over the antitoxin...No, that wasn’t entirely true. Short of Lysithea moving in the same way Constance had, there wasn’t anyone here he could ask for help, yet Metodey’s involvement was a bigger gamble, even if his potential test subject didn’t know all the sensitive details. But then he wasn’t asking—Metodey was offering. 

“I don’t want you to be one. Maybe _research assistant_ if you can follow instructions.”

“Well then, I’m a great research assistant.”

Linhardt was skeptical he’d be anything other than a distraction. Still, the thought made his lips curl into a smile, smaller than Metodey’s face-splitting grin. “We’ll see about that.”


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You really shouldn't neglect your teeth.
> 
> You can see the art for this chapter [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mEoNGV5H5xLEx-gyclEq6riX2NqQKsu7/view?usp=sharing), and as a heads up there's some stuff with spit if this is a thing that grosses you out. Oral hygiene can be messy!

The blood under his essar scope today was inert. Lifeless. All it did was sit there, free of contaminants. That was how it should be, even if its source was an anomaly in her own ways.

Linhardt leaned away from his scope. Lysithea stood next to him, her elbows on the table as she read his journal—with permission this time. They were in one of the institute’s laboratories, away from prying eyes and tell-tale heartbeats, during one of her routine checkups. Not that long ago Lysithea’s blood would have been crowded with the animalcule of Crest-bearers, enough to smother anything else present, but without her Crests her blood finally knew peace, even if her hair was still bleached to a bone-white. Despite her skill with powders and finery these days, her makeup obviously concealed the effects of illness. They hadn’t figured out how to undo that; perhaps there was nothing they _could_ do.

“I think it’s worth a shot,” Lysithea said.

“We still don’t understand the long-term effects, nevermind the inherent risk.”

She looked up from his journal, her expression sharpened to a killing edge. “You think I don’t know that?”

Of all the people in Fodlan, she was one of the few who understood the horrors of blood reconstruction. Such a repulsive thing, even if he weren’t disgusted by the blood itself. Their efforts to recreate the process had taken many sacrifices, albeit none of them human, but they were still lives. It never sat well with Linhardt to take them.

“Suppose we accept the risks. Who would we test it on? For that matter, who do you expect to perform the operation?” He fumbled a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed sweat from his brow. “Certainly not me.”

“I’ve got people I could ask.”

Other scholars? On the rare occasions she mentioned her accomplices, the way she spoke of them suggested something more. Though curiosity pricked at Linhardt about it, he shook his head.

“If I’m not already in contact with them, it’ll create yet another trail that a certain vulture could follow. Ah, hypothetically speaking.”

“...Vulture?” Lysithea wrinkled her nose. “You’re spending way too much time with that guy.”

“Metodey?”

Her eyes went wide as she shushed him.

Linhardt closed his own eyes, tuning his ears to the rhythms of life around him. It was the only useful part of his current hunger. Nothing was in range except Lysithea’s anxious pitter-patter, which meant no one was eavesdropping outside this particular laboratory.

“No one’s around. Well, aside from you.”

He could tell she was skeptical from the way her eyes narrowed. “Don’t tell me you’re back to...to doing weird things with him.”

“Fine then, I won’t.”

“ _Linhardt._ ”

“What? I’m not. He’s my research assistant, if you must know—you used to be one and that was fine, wasn’t it?”

Lysithea stalked over and poked him in the chest. “After you tried to _blackmail me_.”

Linhardt rubbed the back of his neck until she reached up and tugged his collar down. An undignified noise left him in response while she examined his neck, though the lack of hickeys seemed to mollify her, as her expression lost some of its edge by the time she let him go.

He huffed as he fixed his shirt. “There’s not many people we can ask for help. Besides, his experience with poisons has been rather useful.”

“He shouldn’t be involved at all—he’s a total sycophant.” She glanced at her own blood sample, still held in place under the essar scope. “They wouldn’t need to give him anything for him to spill his guts.”

“I haven’t told him all the details."

“So what!”

“It’s not that much riskier than what we’re already doing. You do realize what will happen if we’re discovered, right?” He returned to the scope’s eyepiece. “I’d be questioned with Her Majesty’s ‘blessing’ and, well. Do be careful what you tell me.” The sample blurred in and out of focus as he idly twisted a knob. “I’m...not sure I could resist.”

That was one of the effects they’d need to work on. He’d been wary of experimenting with Metodey after their first attempt and it was a difficult thing to test on himself, but out of all the things Edelgard’s blood could do to people, the compulsion to appease was the most dangerous. Though it was invisible to the naked eye, much like these red clumps under his scope, it could change the course of entire lives.

Lysithea’s voice was quieter when she spoke again. “...It’s not right, lying to him about this.”

“I lie to all sorts of people about it.”

“Yeah, but you’re not _using_ them.”

“On the contrary, Hanneman and Constance have helped quite a bit without their knowledge. Well, their knowledge has helped my knowledge, but they don’t know—oh, you get it.” He switched off the scope with a sigh. “I don’t know why you care about him all of a sudden.”

“Now that’s a stretch. You know he…” Whatever came to mind must have been unpleasant, as she winced, coughed into her fist, and tried again. “It’s an obsession—still creepy—but even I can tell he cares about you. You’re taking advantage of that.”

Linhardt tried not to look at her while he added her latest blood sample to a box filled with past slides. “Maybe. But I fail to see any suitable alternatives.” The box clicked shut. “Unless you have some bright ideas?”

“I wouldn’t start with humans, first of all.” 

“Can’t believe I didn’t think of that. It’d be so easy, what with all the animals I keep around.”

Lysithea's only response was to huff through her nose.

Their argument—if it was one, Linhardt wasn’t sure what, exactly, they were arguing about—reached a stalemate. A brooding silence fell over the room while she helped him clean up and he turned over the possibilities in his mind. Hanneman was in charge of their animal subjects, but it wasn’t like he could submit a request for some with no explanation, and he certainly wasn’t going to go rat-hunting himself. Even trapping, say, pigeons would be so much work, and then he’d have to keep them in his office and birds were much noisier than rats...

“All I’m saying is that you should be careful,” Lysithea said, her voice scattering this line of thought.

Linhardt rubbed his temple. “You’re chock full of insights today.”

“And you’re more obnoxious than usual.”

Though Lysithea was gifted with a manner of speech that could cut bone even in her good moods, it sounded like genuine irritation this time. As she turned to leave, he called out to her.

“It’s all sound advice. And yes, I’m aware of Metodey’s...infatuation.” Unable to meet her piercing gaze, he addressed her shoes instead. “I’m a little fond of him, myself.”

“Gross,” she said, but her tone was softer.

A smile tugged at his lips. “I suppose it is.”

◆◆◆

When Linhardt returned to his office, two plates with chicken clumsily balanced in his hands, he found Metodey lying on the couch, hands folded under his head, staring up at the ceiling. He’d gotten far too comfortable leaving his room whenever he pleased, among other things.

Linhardt followed his gaze up to the ceiling, where two scalpels were embedded in the wooden crossbeam. “...What are you doing?”

Despite his spot underneath them, Metodey looked rather unperturbed. “Seeing if they fall.” 

Linhardt set the plates on his table, his brow furrowed. “Even if you don’t poke any holes in yourself, you’re going to ruin my couch.

“ _Psh_ , I’ll catch them.”

A dubious claim. They were already in the ceiling, though, and he didn’t have a way to dislodge them—something like a wind spell, maybe, but that might damage the wood. Flinging blades around probably wasn’t a good idea, anyway.

He stood there, frowning at them with his arms crossed until Metodey sat up and made room for him on the couch.

“I’m not sitting there,” Linhardt said, flopping into his lounge chair instead.

Metodey patted the cushion. “It’s _fine_.”

It was fine, for a while. As strange a routine it was, they ate while Linhardt mused aloud about some of his ideas and Metodey scarfed down his meal. Every now and then one of them would glance up at the scalpels, until Metodey climbed onto the table—heedless of any complaints—and jumped to reach them. He knocked one loose, managed to catch it mid-air, smirked down at Linhardt.

The second blade landed in his couch; Metodey’s smirk curled into a sheepish grin when he yanked it out.

If he thought it was cute then he was sorely mistaken. Linhardt finished his meal in silence, mentally combing through his meeting with Lysithea for any insights. The only thing that stood out was how foolish he felt to admit Metodey was growing on him at all. Like algae, perhaps, with its unsightly slime that was oddly pleasant under his fingers.

...Of all the words that came to mind when he was being a nuisance like this, unsightly wasn’t one of them. Even when Metodey started picking his teeth with one of the scalpels, Linhardt found himself noticing silly things like how wide his legs were spread, or how easy it’d be to fit between them.

“That’s an awful way to clean your teeth,” Linhardt said.

Metodey rolled his eyes. “It gets the job done.”

“I can’t imagine very well—it’d be far more efficient to brush them, which we can’t do with a scalpel.”

“We?” His face twisted up in a scowl. “I’ll take care of it myself.”

Linhardt set his plate aside. “What if you poke yourself with those claws of yours? Seems like it'd be painful.”

Metodey pricked his gums with the scalpel’s point, then ran his tongue over a red bead of blood. “Not bad.”

“...Nevermind.”

What was he thinking? Was he really this shallow? It didn’t matter how good something looked if you bit into it only to taste rot, though the tightness in his chest loosened when Metodey mumbled an apology—insincere as it probably was—and pressed his sleeve to the wound to stop its bleeding.

“So you’ll brush my teeth, is that it?” Fabric muffled his words.

It would’ve been better to say no, Linhardt knew, even as he nodded.

As he led Metodey into his bedroom, he realized this was the first time he’d invited his roommate-of-sorts in. Perhaps Metodey had already snuck in here, but the curious way he looked around suggested this was new territory, or maybe it was only a front. Locks were apparently useless against this man even if Linhardt _had_ one for his bedroom...Or maybe Metodey had listened to his request to keep out. That his piles of laundry remained scattered across the floor was compelling evidence. It didn’t matter either way, since anything he actually wanted to hide was kept in his dullest nooks and crannies, invisible despite being easy to find, much like a single blade of grass in a field. When paired with a few juicy yet unimportant secrets for Metodey to stumble across, Linhardt was fairly confident it’d do the trick. Bringing him in here for something pragmatic most likely helped; there wasn’t anything special to his bedroom, and being in here might dispel whatever mystique it had to Metodey.

Linhardt ushered him around the laundry and sat him on a stool, next to a sink tucked into the corner, there in theory for his own hygiene. Everything they’d need was on a nearby shelf for his personal use, save for gloves, which were also pragmatic, because it’d be unwise to poke around anyone’s mouth without some form of protection. He filled a glass with water before cupping Metodey’s face.

Metodey leaned into the touch.

All Linhardt felt was smooth leather when he ran his thumb across Metodey’s scaled cheeks, then pushed his lip up to examine both his earlier wound and his fangs, a dull pressure against the glove that sharpened when he bit down.

“Can’t help it,” Metodey mumbled around his finger.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” he said, slipped it out, then dipped two of his fingers into a dish of charcoal powder.

He began with a methodic touch, rubbing the charcoal until it formed a paste he smeared along Metodey’s yellowed teeth, which were dotted with a few black specks even before he covered them. Cavities or pepper grains from dinner? Best not to dwell on the possibilities. This was why he had gloves, after all, to keep some distance between himself and this man’s filthy mouth.

It was mostly his mouth. Now that he had regular access to soap and combs and razors, he cleaned up well enough and spent quite a lot of time on his appearance for someone who’d come from a sewer. Well, Constance wasn’t any different in that regard, but Metodey had been in such a rancid state at first that it was surprising to learn he was just as vain as her.

A surprise, yes, but not an unwelcome one.

When Metodey looked up at him like this, slack-jawed without any ghoulish expressions, one couldn’t help but notice the pleasant curves of his face. He clutched the edge of the stool, his thighs squeezing together whenever Linhardt brushed across his gums, his body coiled tight with anticipation.

Linhardt paused with his thumb at Metodey’s canine. “Does this feel good or something?”

Metodey nodded.

“...I see.” He pressed his thumb further in.

By the time he reached the back molars the paste was uselessly thin, so he withdrew his fingers and blobbed up more powder, unsure whether or not to comment on Metodey’s quiet sounds once he resumed cleaning. Eventually Metodey bit his fingers and there was no ignoring _that_ —though the bite was gentle and his glove thick enough that it didn’t hurt, he still felt Metodey’s tongue lick the paste from his fingers. The warmth from it spread down his wrist and through his body, heating his cheeks even after he pulled away with his hand curled against his own chest.

Metodey’s grin was painted like black-veined marble. “What now?”

Linhardt reached around him for the glass of water perched on the sink’s edge. It put him close enough to see himself reflected in Metodey’s bright eyes, close enough to smell the earthy tinge to his breath, close enough for the blood rushing through his veins to thrum in Linhardt’s ears—but only for a moment. He pressed the glass into Metodey’s palm, then walked to the other side of the sink, where he rolled the edge of his glove between his fingers.

“You rinse your mouth.”

Metodey looked down at the water, then up with a pout.

Linhardt gestured at the glass. “Go on.”

“And theeen?”

“Hm,” he said, rubbing his chin with his clean hand, “I could go for a nap…”

Metodey twisted around enough to tip the water into the sink, staring all the while.

“...Or you can sit there with your mouth full of charcoal. It makes no difference to me.”

What, exactly, did Metodey think would happen? Something Lysithea wouldn’t approve of, Linhardt reminded himself, not that it was a concern if Metodey refused to take care of his mouth. No matter what he wanted to do with it, it was out of the question while he was dribbling spit down his chin.

Metodey wiped his mouth with his sleeve; all it did was stain yet another of Linhardt’s shirts. “You can nap later. I’m hungry.”

His throat was dry and empty when he swallowed. “We just ate.”

“Not a _real_ meal.” Metodey stood, made his way over, and brushed Linhardt’s hair away from his neck, exposing pale skin that he caressed with the back of his talons. “It’s been a while...haven’t I done enough?”

Linhardt pushed him away with a hand on his chest. “Rinse first.”

It was frustrating, the warmth Metodey’s touch left behind. Even as Linhardt watched him lean over the sink—he looked away when Metodey spat, loudly—the phantom sensation of smooth claws and rough hands roaming his body lingered in his thoughts, an ember that refused to be snuffed out. The real issue was that it remained even after Metodey looked up with his teeth still charcoal-smeared.

“I meant with water.”

“A sip,” Metodey said, making no move to rinse. “Even from the syringe—let me have a taste.”

Linhardt refilled the glass for him. “Don’t be so stubborn.”

“You’re hungry too, aren’t you?”

His gaze drifted to the sink, where black spatters dotted the basin. Absolutely disgusting, all of it. Worst of all was the tight knot of hunger in his stomach—one he should’ve seen coming—a craving much like the ailments that plagued drunkards and habitual coffee drinkers. There wasn’t any nutritional value to liquor or coffee or Edelgard’s blood and the comfort such things brought was fleeting, at best. The worst effects of withdrawal could be avoided with a monthly dose, but of course he’d suffer more now that his body had reacclimated to her presence.

Metodey had wandered over again while he was lost in thought.

“...I don’t need it that often.” Linhardt pressed the glass into his hands before putting a little more distance between them. “Neither do you.”

“Don’t you know how to have any fun?”

“Your idea of _fun_ is rather draining. I can’t spare any blood right now, not when the Emperor needs me to work harder than ever.”

Metodey swirled the water around his glass. “ _She’s_ got plenty to spare.”

“Even so, our supply is limited by...ah, nevermind.” An explanation would invite an argument, or at least having to listen to Metodey pick at him about theoretical loopholes. “Sacrifices for our glorious Empire, regardless of how we feel about it. Surely you understand.”

Even though he narrowed his eyes at Linhardt, Metodey chugged the water, swished it around, and spat into the sink again. This time he leaned back with only a few smudges around his lips.

...Ones that Linhardt was compelled to wipe away. Metodey bit his finger, held it in place between his teeth. After a moment of provocative eye contact, he sucked the tip into his mouth and tugged. It was difficult to appreciate with gloves on.

Linhardt slipped his hand out of one and placed it on the sink, his throat drier than ever. As pleasant as it was to imagine teeth at his neck, it sickened him to think of plunging his own fangs into Metodey’s skin—not his neck, maybe his wrist or thigh—even as his mouth watered. The knot in his stomach was hunger, yes, but tangled up with all this other nonsense when it didn’t need to be. What might happen if he separated the threads?

“I think I missed a few spots.” Linhardt dipped his bare fingers into the charcoal powder. “I’ll get them if you sit back down.”

Charcoal was used to absorb toxins, among other things. The thought drifted in while he stuck his fingers in Metodey’s mouth. As with most medicine, it probably didn’t taste good, but the eagerness with which Metodey sucked at his fingers made Linhardt wonder—it was as if he’d been starving his whole life and this was his first _real_ meal. Linhardt found himself relishing this slick tongue against his fingers, which tried to wrap around them even as he thrust in and out and along Metodey’s gums with gentle ministrations that left them both red-faced. Metodey’s breaths were ragged by the time he slid out, a thin black string of saliva connecting them until Linhardt wiped his hand on the other man’s shirt.

It was much easier to prod him into a second rinse with the wordless implication that something more was ahead. Metodey swished the water, spat, then flashed him a smile, still yellowed but much nicer to look at. He smelled nicer, too, as Linhardt discovered when he pressed him against the wall and pried his mouth open.

...There were definitely a few cavities in there.

Before Linhardt could figure out what he wanted from this examination, a sudden _thunk_ in the wall startled Metodey enough for him to snap his mouth shut—a curse slipped out of Linhardt as he jerked away, rubbing pain from his fingers. He swore again once he realized the sound was a message landing in his receiving station.

Metodey swallowed. “Sorry, I—”

“Wait here.”

Sure enough, when he trudged back into his office and unlocked the station’s panel, a brass cylinder waited inside. Perhaps it was for the best. He’d been getting rather carried away, hadn’t he?

The cylinder was cool in his hands, the kind of chill that brought him back to his senses, and the message inside made his stomach lurch in a way that took care of any distracting thoughts.

_We’ve an important matter to discuss. In person. It would be an insult beyond measure of you to keep us waiting yet again. Have you misplaced our schedule? Are my reminders reaching you? Did you read my last report? I’ve respected your request for a truly excessive amount of privacy, but in return it is only courteous of you to put in the bare minimum—_

Linhardt crumpled the paper in his hand. Constance’s elegant handwriting, of course. The report in question was probably on his desk along with the schedule he’d stopped keeping track of. It wasn’t like he’d been trying to ignore her—not completely—but his work with Lysithea took precedence, not that he could tell her this, and all they really needed him for was his signature on their reports to Edelgard, anyway.

The bedroom door creaked open as Metodey’s peeked his head out.

He hung his own head and sighed. “Why do I bother.”

“You didn’t say _how long_ to wait.”

“Just don’t bother me while I...” He looked down at the crumpled message. This seemed like one he’d have to reply to, presumably to schedule whatever it was they wished to discuss. Perhaps he could use it to his advantage. No, not a _perhaps_ —as he watched Metodey slink over to his desk, his thoughts arranged themselves into something less heated and more useful. “...Actually, there’s something I’d like your help with.”

Metodey’s face lit up. “Sure.”

“You don’t know what it is.”

He touched Linhardt’s thigh. “I can make some guesses.”

Linhardt swatted his hand away. “Assumptions, you mean. Inaccurate ones at that.”

“I’ll still do it, whatever you want.”

“I want you to _listen_ , so let’s start there. This is serious.” It’d be pragmatic to offer something in return. “If you do a good job, I might consider some of those assumptions.”


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally...! An update! Life happens. While I'd like to get back to a weekly schedule, that's a bit ambitious for where I'm at with writing right now, so I'll shoot for once every other week. I hope you enjoy this molasses pace on your journey through Linhardt and Metodey's coagulating passion.
> 
> The second scene in this chapter is pretty blunt about Linhardt's troubles with blood being compared to an eating disorder, as a heads up

It was dim in his office, as it often was when Metodey was out, with his curtains tied shut and a candle burning on the table between them. Something stale hung in the air; his whole office had become one of those closets shut up for so long they’d housed several generations of moths, yet there was an unidentifiable nuance to the smell. Metodey toyed with the door of a nearby cage, making it sway one direction with his finger, then the other, while Linhardt traced a path along a floor plan. 

Linhardt sighed. “...You’re not even listening.”

“Down the hall, first left, take the stairs and stay out of the elevator shaft—don’t want to get crushed—second floor, keep an eye out for anyone going for a second dinner, no guard where the animals are kept but someone might be feeding them or cleaning or whatever.” Metodey shut the door with a flick of his claw. “Any questions?”

Well. That was the gist. He’d left out an important detail, though. “What should you do if someone finds you?”

Metodey slid the floor plan out from Linhardt’s finger and spun it around, his eyes darting between rooms, hopefully along the path they’d agreed on. “Run.”

“And if you’re caught?”

He looked up and rolled his eyes. “I’m not some amateur.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“ _If_ I’m caught, don’t hurt anyone. I’ve had jobs like this before,” he muttered with the enthusiasm of a scribe asked to copy a six-volume set of genealogy records.

His gaze lingered on the Institute’s underground floors, unlabeled and not anywhere he needed to know about, anyway, though Linhardt wondered how much he remembered of the isolation ward. Hopefully not enough to cause problems, as both evidence and experience suggested that Metodey was good at that, picking apart schematics for gaps in security, fine-tuning suggested routes, memorizing schedules to recite back. The qualities that made for a skilled assassin made for a skilled guard—something Linhardt hadn’t considered until now.

Had Metodey been a skilled assassin? In theory, yes, even if his dusty memories were of failure. Were it not for the necessity of those skills now, Linhardt would’ve preferred to think he was incompetent.

“If I’d known you wanted rats, I’d have left some alive.”

“They’re no ordinary rats.” Linhardt’s fingers, with their claw-like nails, brushed across an indication of how pipes connected between floors. “Mm, not anymore.”

The paper jerked away from him as Metodey half-climbed on the table with one knee and leaned across it. When he opened his mouth to complain about such careless treatment of valuable info and how he’d almost knocked the candle over, Metodey covered Linhardt’s hand with his own. A warm touch, accompanied by a stutter in someone’s heartbeat and that queer smell... 

“Either way, I bet I’ll work up a big appetite out there,” Metodey said. “So what’s tonight’s special?”

Linhardt slipped out from under his hand but cupped his cheek and lingered in his presence long enough to confirm that no, it wasn’t his breath, but it was an unfortunately metallic scent. There wasn’t any visible blood on Metodey, not that this stopped Linhardt from retreating.

The university bell stopped him from asking about it, however. Maybe it was best he didn’t know, and anyway, the distant tolling meant it was time to leave.

He leaned close enough to pat Metodey’s cheek, then dragged himself off his couch. “Assuming no one gets himself arrested, I suppose we’ll find out.”

◆◆◆

Linhardt thumbed through a stack of papers in his hands, annoyed at how much better it felt to sigh in Hanneman’s office. The air was crisper here, cleaner. It surely helped that he could open the windows whenever he pleased.

 _Everything_ here was cleaner. Despite the improvements to his own office, when sitting at a table with Constance and Hanneman, Linhardt felt like the dirtiest thing in the room. It didn’t help that the blood-tinged smell had followed him.

Such thoughts were a distraction, however. He flipped through the papers faster in search of any visuals to explain the contraption sprawled along the floor, with its cylindrical tanks and pipes welded together as part of some strange adolescence—a design that was vaguely reminiscent of the Institute’s plumbing. Though their plumbing was a scientific marvel, some of the pipes were connected to the palace’s drainage system, an underground umbilical cord of sorts that Linhardt tried not to think about, or else he’d be queasy every time he used a sink. Separate from their water supply, of course, but sometimes he had this half-awake worry that he’d turn a faucet only for the Emperor’s blood to crawl out instead, that he’d be desperate enough to press his tongue to the metal, lick scabbed-over red flakes, and— 

Was that what his colleagues were working on?

“I did read your last report,” Linhardt said as his eyes traced the stark angles of a nearby pipe, “but I seem to have missed the part about...this.”

Constance held the point of her fan against the table like a knife. “You’d know if you read the whole thing. Or anything else I’ve sent as of late.”

He waited for her to elaborate, even gestured for her to go on, but instead she looked to Hanneman with a crease in her brow.

“Oh, come on.” He let the papers fall from his hands and spill across the table. “Now’s your chance to fill me in on what you’ve been up to. Isn’t that why you wanted to see me?”

Hanneman was frowning under his mustache. Linhardt found the threads of his patience fraying into...not anger, he didn’t have the energy for that, and in a rational sense there was nothing to be angry about. Their diligence absolved him of reporting to Edelgard directly, which in turn allowed him to focus on his own work. Objectively, it was good that they’d done so much without him...but they shouldn’t waste his time like this, even if he was mostly just here to waste theirs.

“We thought it best not to trouble you,” Hanneman said. “Inquiries into the properties of blood have never been—pardon the phrase—to your taste.”

Constance snorted a laugh at that, tried to hide it into one of her musical titters, while Linhardt stared.

There were plenty of ways to stall and he suspected Hanneman and Constance could waste quite a lot of time gossiping about him, with or without his presence. He pushed his chair away from the table and stood, only for his legs to wobble at the sudden change as blood rushed to his head and he had to lean over, ruining any attempts to seem authoritative. Both Hanneman and Constance sat up straighter in their seats, though when Hanneman reached out a hand to steady him he swatted it away.

“I still have a right to know as Director,” Linhardt said, smoothing down his frumpled robes.

The table rattled as Constance stood, too. “So _now_ you remember your title!”

“I never forgot. I told you, I’ve been trying to keep up so don’t be so difficult—”

“Difficult!” She stalked around to his side of the table, jabbed her fan at his chest. “Bold words from a man who expects the whole world to cater to his miserable whims.”

“Miss Nuvelle, please.” Hanneman entered the fray with a hand on Constance’s shoulder that she brushed off. “This isn’t on the agenda.”

“...What agenda?” Linhardt asked.

Constance twirled her way around Hanneman and flopped back into her seat with a huff. He stood there, polishing his monocle for a moment before clearing his throat. “There appear to be some...inaccurate reports about your withdrawals from our blood supply.”

“With very little to show for it,” she added, now scrutinizing her nails.

“All this drama over clerical errors?” Linhardt found himself staring at her nails, too, with their crimson layer of paint. “It’s easy to mix things up when you’re tired.”

Hanneman tucked his handkerchief back into his pocket. “Yes, well, we suspect they aren’t errors.”

Though Hanneman kept his tone at an even keel, Linhardt flinched all the same. “I’d rather not discuss my eating habits.”

“There seems to be more to it than a case of overindulgence,” Hanneman said.

Linhardt stepped away from the table, swallowed hard. “And what makes you say that?”

“You’ve had trouble keeping food down in the past, blood or otherwise”—that Constance so easily conflated the two made him cringe—“and remain ever so gaunt no matter how much you scurry off with.”

“Who’d you hear this from?” He turned to Hanneman, who raised his hands with his palms outward in a defensive gesture.

“We’re concerned about your health.” One of his hands drifted back to his monocle, which he adjusted. “It’s only natural I would share some of my theories on the matter.”

“Oh? You have _theories_ about me? Do tell.”

“It’s a sore subject, I know,” Constance said before Hanneman could elaborate. “The kind of affliction you so desperately wish to keep to yourself, only to end up a spectacle.” She spread her fan with a flick of her wrist and hid behind it while a bitter note cracked her voice. “And how everyone feels the need to comment on it.”

 _Affliction_. Such a gentle-sounding word with a sting at the end.

“...What if I told you I was eating for two?” he said, patting his stomach.

Her fan snapped shut. “Now is hardly the time for such inappropriate jokes!”

For a moment—just a moment—Hanneman stroked his goatee as if giving it serious thought, which almost made Linhardt regret saying it, but then he sighed and shook his head. “Miss Nuvelle has a point. Please don’t joke about that sort of thing.”

“Regardless,” Linhardt said, his arm shifting from his stomach to behind him as he paced, his back turned, “what I do with my own body is my business. Not yours.”

“When it involves the Emperor’s blood, it becomes Empire business.”

Though it was Constance’s voice, Hubert’s long shadow was cast over her words. Did he already know about this? Was he in on their gossip? What were his thoughts on Director Hevring’s affliction? Or—maybe he didn’t know and that was all Constance. They were two of Edelgard’s most devout lackeys, after all.

“Shouldn’t you be proud of me?” A dark reflection in a brass cylinder met his hand when he touched it. “Now I’m a model citizen. I pay my taxes, cast my votes, drink my blood…”

Hanneman’s reflection appeared beside him, distorted along the cylinder’s edge. “It’s all about moderation,” he said, his hand on Linhardt’s shoulder. “We know you’ve been...ill, and perhaps this is your way of trying to recover. Neither of us think poorly of you for it.”

Either they should comfort him or lecture him; attempting both made them sound like his parents. But wasn’t this convenient? Why investigate further if you thought you knew the answer? Let them think whatever they wanted, so long as it didn’t involve any theoretical fugitives who might be in his office.

“Recovery,” Linhardt said through grit teeth, “is a slow process. It’s only natural for there to be some bumps along the way.”

“Indeed.” Hanneman gave his shoulder one more pat before he stepped back. “Having said all that, for now we think it best to keep this among ourselves.”

Linhardt turned around, blinking.

Constance walked into his view, her smile all fangs. “Delicate matters are best handled with a delicate touch, don’t you think?”

“And the catch is…?”

“I wouldn’t say _catch_ …” Hanneman said.

“We think you could use a little vacation. Some fresh air after all this time cooped up, and anyway, dear Hanneman is more than capable of fitting in your shoes.” She glanced down. “Or slippers.”

“There’s no need for anything drastic.”

“I’d hardly call a vacation drastic.” She was close enough for a whiff of blood to hit him. “When was the last time you left the Institute, hm?”

Linhardt covered his nose with his sleeve and leaned against the cylinder, whose metal chill was a welcome distraction from the smell. “I...haven’t needed to, that’s all.”

“On the contrary,” Hanneman said. “Some time away from Enbarr seems like it’d do wonders.”

No matter how he tried to rub it away, it clung to his nostrils. “How would you know?” he asked, his voice muffled by fabric. “Don’t tell me _you’ve_ got a taste for Her Majesty all of a sudden.” 

“I only mean that If it’s a matter of temptation, then putting some distance between it and yourself should help.”

When Constance’s two-toned curls brushed against his shoulder, he could _taste_ the blood in his nostrils. “A week or two wouldn’t hurt. I’ll arrange a room for you at the Nuvelle estate, with the softest pillows in—”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Shoving her wouldn’t end well, so instead he ducked around her and retreated to the table, only for the smell to chase after him.

Constance did too, though she kept her distance this time. “Then what will you do here? If you mean to continue moping in that filthy—”

“I haven’t been _moping_. I—I’ve cleaned up.”

“Oh, good!” She clasped her hands together, her face still stretched into a smile. “It’ll be nice to meet somewhere else for a change.”

“...I’m still cleaning.”

It shrank into a carefully neutral expression, save for her raised eyebrows. “Is that so.”

“You want me at meetings? Fine. I can do that much.” He gathered up the report splattered across the table until Hanneman rested his hand on one of the papers. Their eyes met; Linhardt jerked it out from under his glove. “And I certainly know how to read.”

“What about your, ah...” Hanneman gestured towards Linhardt’s stomach.

His fingers bent a sharp, dog-eared crease into the report. “You shouldn’t joke about that sort of thing.”

“No, no, my boy, I mean your dining—”

“I know I can’t keep…” No matter how he fussed, the crease remained. “...living like this.”

“Knowing about something isn’t doing something about it,” Constance said. “We need more than empty words here, Linhardt.”

“I’m at a meeting now, aren’t I?” He flipped around the bent page in his hand, tapped on a diagram of glyphs. “Your work, let’s get back to that. Or I can sit here and read and you can watch me, maybe quiz me just like the old days, professor.”

It wasn’t enough to ease Constance’s furrowed brow or the hand on her hip, but at least he got a smile out of Hanneman.

“I’m eating,” he went on, “and I _can_ keep it down. Moderation is a work in progress, much like…” He pointed the report towards the cylinder. “Whatever this is.”

Hanneman was the first to respond. “...Very well. You know how well food keeps in the winter? It’s due to the cold, more or less, so we’ve been trying to turn that into something portable, something anyone could use.”

While he went on in that pedantic tone of his, Linhardt skimmed the report, but soon found the bloody smell clung to the paper, too. It didn’t change whether he sniffed it up close or kept it at arm's length. He caught Constance’s scrunched-up expression in the corner of his eye—which suggested _he_ was the source, despite his thick layers of perfume and the scented bag tucked into his sleeve to prevent such a thing.

Perhaps the only stains were in his thoughts. That was simple enough to test, so Linhardt set the report aside and went to unlatch the window. A breeze drifted in, warm on his cheeks, and while the smell proved inescapable, basking in the light was a small comfort. From here he could see the main courtyard, where his peers walked the ant-trails of their daily routines, passing through sunlight and shadow as they went between columns. Bright roses wound around some of the columns, much too far for him to enjoy.

His eyes scanned the corridors, the rooftop, the rooms he could see through the windows across the courtyard, in search of any beady eyes or someone slinking through the shadows.  
No one. Good. Metodey’s task shouldn’t take him anywhere near the courtyard, though part of Linhardt wished he could smell the roses, however faintly. He’d compliment Linhardt’s perfume every now and then—an excuse to intrude upon his personal space—but that was the distilled essence of something dead.

Roses ought to live in gardens, vibrant and green. Not ruined and stuffed into bottles, or left to rot in gaudy displays, or archived between book pages...but it was convenient for him to wear, so he did.

Once, he’d visited the Gloucester estate on Institute business only to spend most of it napping in their famed gardens. Yet now when he tried to wrap himself in a memory of what _real_ roses smelled like, his mind fixated on their color—a venous red that tainted his view of the courtyard’s roses and left him pressing his tongue against his fangs. He should’ve told their gardener to plant white ones.

Hanneman’s sigh scattered the thought. “...You’ve already stopped listening.”

“No, go on.” Linhardt turned away from the window. “I think you’re right about the need for fresh air, that’s all. Seems I’ve forgotten what it's like.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I post updates and all sorts of nonsense on [my twitter](https://twitter.com/PentagonBuddyEX) if you want to check that out


End file.
